How long will my money last if I stop today?
The Die with Zero calculator starts with a simple question: how long can you fund your standard of living from your existing wealth? You enter your current age, your invested capital and your monthly costs. Then come assumptions for return and inflation. The result is not a new monthly budget that you first have to interpret. You see directly up to what age your money lasts under these assumptions.
Your capital is allowed to shrink in the process. So you do not have to live solely on interest or dividends. The rest of the portfolio stays invested while you take out a part each month. The calculator models exactly this combination of continued returns and drawing down capital. It is an independent implementation and not an official tool for Bill Perkins’ book.
Only enter wealth that you actually want to withdraw for this purpose. A home you live in, tied-up stakes in companies or an untouched emergency fund are not the same as freely available money in your portfolio. If a reserve is to be kept, deduct it from the amount you enter beforehand. The model does not know about the rest of your wealth.
Example: age 38, $800,000 in ETFs, $6,000 monthly costs
Suppose you are 38, have $800,000 invested and need $6,000 a month. If you earned no return and there were no inflation and no taxes, you could fund 133 full months. That equals 11 years and 1 month. For the following month a partial amount remains, but no longer the full spending.
For the pre-filled scenario I calculate with a constant 10% nominal annual return and 3% inflation. With this, the wealth lasts 19 years and 9 months in the monthly model. The first month’s spending that is not fully funded then falls at 57 years and 9 months. The example explicitly applies before taxes, without a pension and without other income. The 10% is a calculation assumption you can change, not a promised ETF return. It is applied to the wealth still remaining after each withdrawal.
This figure is a model answer, not a prediction. If you add a tax profile, the required sales change. If a pension comes later, it can take over part of the costs. If you keep working and save more, your exit moves and you start with a different portfolio value. The settings therefore build step by step on your first answer.
Let your portfolio grow and stop completely later
Right next to the result there is a second comparison: “If you let your portfolio grow first”. For this, your later monthly costs stay unchanged in the input field. Until your exit, however, they count as covered in some other way, for example by your work. During this time you withdraw nothing and pay in nothing extra. Only after that does your portfolio carry your full living costs.
In the example this gives age 43 as the first whole exit age, before taxes. At 43, today’s $800,000 would have grown to about $1,288,408 nominal at the assumed 10% return. After 3% annual inflation, this equals around $1,111,392 in today’s purchasing power. Today’s $6,000 of monthly costs would then equal around $6,956 nominal. The rest stays invested after each monthly withdrawal.
This second comparison asks more than whether your money lasts until 95 or 120. It checks whether all future, inflation-adjusted monthly withdrawals could be funded on paper under the constant assumptions. New contributions, pension and extra income are deliberately not added here. Your chosen tax profile and the purchase value, on the other hand, are taken into account. “Permanent in the model” is no promise of lifelong security: actual price swings can change a retirement plan. FINRA explains this investment risk, including for long-term investments.
Why your money keeps working despite withdrawals
The calculator does not pay out the portfolio on the first day. It works month by month. First it looks at which income is actually available after taxes. Then it calculates the difference to your monthly costs. Only this gap has to come from the portfolio. If tax on sales is switched on, correspondingly more is sold so that enough is left for spending after tax.
Then the remaining portfolio earns the assumed monthly return. This is derived geometrically from the annual return. Money already spent earns nothing more. A shrinking portfolio can still keep generating returns. Drawing down capital simply means that your withdrawals exceed the returns coming in.
The chart shows the portfolio in today’s purchasing power. The annual values also include the nominal amounts. A portfolio value shown is not automatically fully available after taxes: if you additionally sold everything, further tax could be due on the untaxed gains it contains.
Adding extra income and a later pension
Extra income can come from part-time work or letting property, for example. What matters is the amount you actually have left to live on after costs, taxes and contributions. Enter when it starts and when it ends. The starting age is included; from the end age you enter, the income stops. The costs this income covered before may then have to be taken over by the portfolio.
The pension has its own setting because it often starts much later. Enter the expected amount at the start of your pension in today’s purchasing power. A pension that is already being paid starts today in the model, without retroactively receiving a fictitious pension increase. After it starts, the pension develops with the nominal “Annual pension increase” you set separately. If this is lower than inflation, its purchasing power falls.
Both amounts count as net by default. If you only know a gross amount, you can activate the corresponding option and enter your “Estimated taxes and contributions” as a percentage. The calculator deducts this share. This is not a personal income tax rate and not a calculation of the taxable portion of the pension. Income already entered as net is not taxed again.
A pension at 67 only helps your ongoing plan if the years before it are funded. If your money runs out at 55, there is a funding gap until 67. The calculator ends the duration calculation at the first month that is not fully covered. It does not assume a loan against future pension payments. Income above your costs is not automatically invested on top.
Tax on sales: purchase value and gain are different
A portfolio withdrawal does not consist solely of gains. Part of it is the money you originally invested. The simplified model only taxes positive nominal capital gains on sale. That is why it asks for the “Original purchase value of the portfolio” you already hold. A portfolio worth $800,000 for which you once paid $400,000 is not the same for tax purposes as a new $800,000 investment today.
Under “Your tax situation”, you choose “Tax on gains (your own rate)” and enter your average tax on gains from sales. The preset of 15% is only an example. Alternatively, you explicitly choose no tax on sales. How gains are taxed depends on the country you live in, so check the rules where you live or ask a tax advisor.
The existing holdings are combined into a single lot. Savings paid in later create individual purchase lots. When selling, older units are used up first. This only approximates the actual composition of an existing portfolio with many different purchases. Purchase values stay nominal; inflation does not raise them in the model.
The real taxation of funds often goes beyond this simplified sale. Some countries also tax distributions or part of the gain every year while you hold the fund. Such taxes, allowances, loss offsetting and a possible tax on moving abroad are not modeled. The preview is therefore not a complete individual tax forecast.
Stop working later and find the earliest exit
If you do not want to stop today, activate “Stop working later”. Up to the selected age your current portfolio stays invested. Whatever you enter under “Invest extra each month” is invested at the end of the month. You can also enter $0. The same return assumption applies to this build-up phase as to the withdrawal phase. That keeps the first plan simple.
During the build-up, your living costs count as covered by work. The calculator then withdraws nothing from the portfolio. Extra income or pension are not paid in again on top of the monthly savings. The monthly savings should already express what you can invest in total each month. They end at your exit; then funding your living costs from available income and the portfolio begins.
With “Find earliest exit” you also set the age until which your money should last. The calculator checks every whole exit age from today, up to 110 at most. It takes the first age at which, under your assumptions, no earlier gap occurs before the planning end you chose. The result applies to these inputs and to whole years of age, not as a binding recommendation to quit your job.
Inflation, fluctuations and the limits of the result
Monthly costs, monthly savings and additional income are in today’s dollars. The nominal amounts rise with inflation in the model. So a budget of $6,000 in twenty years means the same assumed standard of living as today, but not the same figure on the monthly transfer. For a later exit, the output therefore also shows the nominal monthly costs and the nominal portfolio value.
A constant return is a simplification. In reality good and bad stock market years alternate. Losses at the start of a withdrawal phase in particular can change the path, even if a long-term average looks similar. The additional comparison with a lower return makes this dependence visible, but it is not a probability calculation and not a complete stress test.
The normal duration calculation with chart ends at age 120 at the latest. If no gap occurs before then, it shows “at least until age 120”. This does not imply unlimited reach. The separate comparison for the later exit without new contributions, by contrast, checks permanent coverage in the constant model. This model answer, too, offers no security for a personal retirement plan. Unexpected expenses, care costs and other obligations need to be looked at separately. Use the result to understand your most important assumptions and to play through different scenarios.