The plan’s cumulative wealth shows you just how big the range of return is in your plan, adjusted back at a constant 3% inflation rate. We show you three outcomes - the 90th percentile (an optimistic outcome), the median (50th percentile), and the 10th percentile (a pessimistic outcome).
The way to read these numbers is that 90% of the time you will have less money than the 90th percentile, 50% of the time you will have less than the 50th percentile, and 10% of the time you will have less than the 10th percentile. 80% of the simulations had between the 90th and 10th percentiles. It’s important to remember the other side of that point - 20% of the time the ending value was outside of those numbers.
The cumulative wealth will give you an idea of what the spread of results are, but only at the terminal point. To get a better picture of the dispersion within your plan you need to take a look at the Wealth Over Time report.
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