What if a major crash struck as you began withdrawing from your portfolio? Replay the dot-com bust or 2008 financial crisis with your own balance and spending, comparing Canadian stocks and bonds with a 100% Canadian equity strategy.
Example values are prefilled. Results update as you change them. This is a five-year stress window, not a lifetime safe-withdrawal guarantee.
Rebalanced annually. Compared with 100% Canadian stocks, using the same withdrawals and fees.
A self-reflection prompt, not a risk-profile assessment. Annual observations miss deeper losses within each year.
Withdrawals start at a percentage of the original portfolio and rise with your assumed inflation, not with the remaining balance. They are gross withdrawals before personal tax.
First-year gross withdrawal
$40,000
4% of $1,000,000, increasing 2% annually. Five historical years only; not a lifetime SWR estimate.
Ending portfolio, nominal CAD
$932,034
No spending shortfall in this window.
The observed market decline stays within your 20% loss threshold, but larger or intrayear losses remain possible.
Ending portfolio, nominal CAD
$778,733
No spending shortfall in this window.
The observed market decline exceeds your 20% loss threshold.
Global financial crisis and recovery (2008–2012). Year-end balances after withdrawals, historical returns and your fees, in nominal CAD.
Annual data smooths over intrayear crashes. A recovered year-end balance does not show how difficult it might have felt to stay invested.
| Year | Canadian stocks | Canadian bonds | Requested withdrawal | Stock/bond paid | Stock/bond ending | 100% stocks paid | 100% stocks ending |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | -33.0% | 6.4% | $40,000 | $40,000 | $790,524 | $40,000 | $639,984 |
| 2009 | 35.1% | 5.4% | $40,800 | $40,800 | $919,190 | $40,800 | $805,450 |
| 2010 | 17.6% | 6.7% | $41,616 | $41,616 | $988,796 | $41,616 | $893,778 |
| 2011 | -8.7% | 9.7% | $42,448 | $42,448 | $928,999 | $42,448 | $773,377 |
| 2012 | 7.2% | 3.6% | $43,297 | $43,297 | $932,034 | $43,297 | $778,733 |
These are five-year historical replays, not a calculation of a guaranteed safe withdrawal rate or a 30-year retirement success probability. A portfolio that survives five years can still fail later. Only the selected years are used: no repeated crash cycles or invented recovery returns.
Canadian stocks use S&P/TSX Composite total returns; bonds use the broad FTSE TMX Canada Bond Universe index, as named in the source. Nominal CAD annual returns are rounded to one decimal percentage point and include reinvested distributions. This is Canadian stock/bond diversification, not a globally diversified portfolio or a replay of your actual holdings. The dot-com window starts in January 2000, including that positive calendar year before 2001–2002 losses.
At each year’s start, the model withdraws the requested spending, limited to available funds, then rebalances to the chosen weights. The remaining balance earns that year’s weighted index return, followed by the entered annual fee. There are no contributions, taxes, trading costs, benefit income or account withdrawal restrictions. Any unmet spending is reported as a shortfall; balances cannot go below zero.
Spending rises with the inflation assumption you enter, not historical Canadian CPI. Starting-year-dollar balances use the same assumption. Market-only drawdown measures the decline from a prior peak of a separate, fee-adjusted, no-withdrawal investment index using the starting point and year-end observations. The balance-drop metric also includes spending and is shown in dollars. Neither captures intrayear lows, which can be substantially worse.
Use the loss threshold to ask whether you could keep investing and funding essential spending through a downturn. It cannot establish your true risk tolerance or recommend an allocation. Bonds can also lose money, and past diversification benefits may not recur. Educational information, not personalized investment advice.