can someone explain function of a retirement calculator

Question

one financial blog mentioned the excel spreadsheets at analyzenow.com

the third(3) link is for an excel file for ..How Saving Income Now Can Add Income in Retirement.

I saved the link and ran the excel spreadsheet but did not fully understand the highlighted values (pink vs. white cells) at bottom of the spreadsheet

can someone explain a little of what the values at bottom mean? I used his default values but entered age as 50 (his default 40) and savings

500,000 (his default 100,000)

on the bottom it shows 50% and 80% success rates and some values are negative

Elle · Accepted Answer

See the discussion here:  then try the more friendly Monte Carlo tool here:

jIM · Answer

I did not check the links... more than likely "success rates" means the probability that "past performance" would have worked with the numbers entered.

Meaning 50% of the time your numbers worked (based on how long you live) and 50% of the time you ran out of money before you die.

I will second the advice to check out retirement calculators on any of the following sites:

T Rowe Price Smartmoney Quicken

I would also consider asking questions here. A few regular posters have calculators on their web sites. Joetaxpayer immediately comes to mind.

can someone explain function of a retirement calculator

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