Goal planner
Daily closes with dividends, from Yahoo Finance
Thousands of replays of past returns since 2014.
Daily closes with dividends, from Yahoo Finance
This is an example portfolio with made-up share counts, valued at prices from Nov 12. Sign in and add your holdings to plan with your own.
The range, age 35 to 55
Middle replayMiddle half8 in 10 replaysGoalMoney put in
- Chance of the goal
- 98%
- by 55, of 4,000 replays
- Weakest 1 in 10
- $1.47 million
- Middle replay
- $2.91 million
- $249,000 put in
- Strongest 1 in 10
- $5.63 million
These replays reuse the last 12 years of actual returns, Dec 2014 to Oct 2026, and those were unusually good years for US stocks: the S&P 500 returned about 13.3% a year before inflation. The next 20 years can be worse than any replay here. This is not a forecast, and it is not advice.
Holding a few stocks makes the range wider than an index fund's, and a stock that led these years may not lead the next ones.
Your plan
$
In 20 years, around 2046
$
The example's value today
$
How it works
We take the actual monthly return of every holding from Dec 2014 to Oct 2026 (143 months, dividends included) and weight them by today's mix. Each of the 4,000 replays strings together random 12-month stretches of that history, so a crash and the recovery after it stay together. A stretch that runs past Oct 2026 carries on from Dec 2014.
Your monthly amount goes in at the end of every month. The middle replay is the one in the middle when all of them are lined up; the weakest one in ten is the replay that only one in ten do worse than.
A 20-year plan is longer than the 12 years of history, so each replay reuses stretches of the same years. Real 20-year stretches can differ from each other far more than these replays do.
In today's money, 3% a year comes off every return for rising prices, close to the average yearly rise in US consumer prices since 2014. It is one flat rate, not the month-by-month price index. The goal and the monthly amount are in today's dollars, which means the amount you actually add rises with prices.
Today's holdings were picked knowing how they did, so replaying their whole past leans on hindsight. Each month we count only half of how far each holding beat or trailed the S&P 500: a stock that beat it by 4 points in a month counts as beating it by 2. That share is our judgement, not a measured figure. Pulling each month toward the S&P 500 also narrows how far the holdings swing around it, so the range is narrower too.
It keeps today's mix the whole way, as if you rebalanced every month, and it leaves out taxes, fund fees, trading costs and any money you take out.
The example's holdings
| Holding | Weight | Own prices from | A year, own past | Share of the gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VOO Vanguard S&P 500 ETF | 22% | Dec 2014 | 13.4% | 13% |
| QQQ Invesco QQQ Trust | 16% | Dec 2014 | 17.9% | 13% |
| AAPL Apple | 15% | Dec 2014 | 24.1% | 16% |
| MSFT Microsoft | 12% | Dec 2014 | 23.9% | 13% |
| NVDA NVIDIA | 10% | Dec 2014 | 65.6% | 27% |
| XOM Exxon Mobil | 8% | Dec 2014 | 10.8% | 5% |
| JPM JPMorgan Chase | 7% | Dec 2014 | 18.7% | 6% |
| COST Costco | 6% | Dec 2014 | 20.1% | 5% |
| UNH UnitedHealth | 4% | Dec 2014 | 14.5% | 3% |
Year by year
| Age | Weakest 1 in 10 | Middle | Strongest 1 in 10 | Put in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 | $217,000 | $307,000 | $429,000 | $159,000 |
| 45 | $418,000 | $670,000 | $1.06 million | $189,000 |
| 50 | $795,000 | $1.42 million | $2.48 million | $219,000 |
| 55 | $1.47 million | $2.91 million | $5.63 million | $249,000 |
Daily closes with dividends from Yahoo Finance, turned into month-end returns. Today's weights use the prices from today.