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[quote=Anonymous]Dying with zero is not the goal, unless you are confident in your knowledge about the date of your future death.  And, if you don't care to leave anything to your survivors or to others.

Those calculators typically use Monte Carlo analyses to predict the probability of portfolio success, defined as not running out of money by a specified number of years in the future.  Most people should use age 100 to be safe, although few people will make it that long in practice.  Still, longevity is increasing over time, so you never know.

In any case, the results provided by these calculators depend entirely on the assumptions you give them.  If you use overly optimistic or pessimistic, and consequently unrealistic, expected rates of return, rates for inflation, periodic or episodic withdrawal amounts, etc., you'll get unreliable results.  Spending, for example, is usually not linear - it ebbs and flows with age, health, need for long-term care, and other factors.

The more inputs a calculator allows, and the more informed those inputs are, i.e., based on sensible forecasting models produced by knowledgeable sources, the more reliable the results can be.  But, even then, they depend on predictions about the future and, to that extent, are always going to be to a certain extent a "best guess" rather than an ironclad guarantee.

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