Three steps. First, see how long your savings carry your income on their own, invested the way most retirees invest, through the real markets of 2001–2025. Then build the Volatility Firewall under your baseline income and watch what changes. Then compare the two in every order those years could have come in. Everything updates as you type.
Most retirees live on Social Security plus withdrawals from savings they keep partly in stocks and partly in bonds. It works until the order of returns turns against them: losses early, while withdrawals are coming out, do damage the good years can’t fully repair.
The Volatility Firewall takes your baseline off the table. This income doesn’t manage market risk. It removes your baseline income from the market’s jurisdiction entirely: the bills that can’t wait are paid by a contract for both your lives, and the rest of your money stays invested for everything else.
Watch for: the Order of Returns in Step 3. The same 25 market years in every possible order, and how often each plan comes out ahead.
Your savings, what you spend, and the income you already have. Everything else is built in.
Set it to what you hold today. 60/40 is the classic balanced mix. Rebalanced back to this split every year.
Stocks: the S&P 500’s actual total return each year, less the 1.5% Activity Drag.
Safe money: bonds. It earns each year’s actual return on an even split of 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds and investment-grade (Baa) corporate bonds, close to what a typical core bond fund holds. The returns come from the same NYU Stern data set as the S&P 500 figures, year by year in the same order. Over 2001–2025 that mix averaged about 5.1% a year (4.9% compounded), with five losing years, the worst −16.5% in 2022. That average is for reference only; the calculator uses each actual year.
With the Firewall: the money left invested keeps your same 60%/40% mix. The annuity sits beside it, so the Firewall plan holds less in stocks overall.
Costs: a 1% fee on the whole invested balance, every year.
Spending, Social Security and pension stay at today’s dollars every year. Turn this on to have them rise with inflation.
Every number here is the market’s actual net, not its advertised average. Tap a force to read how it’s measured.
The Volatility Firewall is guaranteed income for both your lives, bought with part of your savings. This income doesn’t manage market risk. It removes your baseline income from the market’s jurisdiction entirely. It’s sized to your baseline, no more, so the rest of your money stays invested.
Every plan comes down to three what-ifs. Pick an age and see each one, after tax.
How the tax is run. What’s left is taxed as a terminal tax: all at once, in the year you pick. Taxing it all in one year would push most of it into the top brackets, so it’s run at a lower 25% (20% federal + 5% state), about what heirs would pay taking it out over the ten years the law gives them. Income is taxed at the same rate as it’s paid. That puts both plans on the same footing, so you see the net-net numbers, all things considered.
After tax, if the last of you died at each age.
The same 25 market years, started in each year in turn. “2009 first” means your first year earns 2009’s stock and bond returns, then 2010’s, and so on to 2025, then 2001 onward again. Everything else stays the same. Each figure is net-net at 95: all the income received from savings plus what’s left, after tax.
Before tax. Income comes out at the start of each year; balances are at the end of the year, at the age shown.
| Age | Year | Stocks overall | S&P 500 | Bonds | Market only | With the Volatility Firewall | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income | Balance | Guaranteed | From investments | Annuity value | Invested | Total | |||||
The Firewall protects your baseline income. Its partner, the Volatility Buffer, protects your lifestyle and legacy: a non-correlated reserve built from policy cash value that you draw from the year after a market loss, so the money you still have invested gets to recover instead of being sold low. Used together, the Firewall removes the risk to your income and the Buffer absorbs the risk to everything else.
A Retirement Income Diagnostic shows how both would fit your numbers.
Print it, save it as a PDF, or email it to yourself. You’ll get a copy in your inbox, and Nate gets one too, so your numbers are ready if you talk.
You leave with a clear answer to “will it last?” on your own numbers: how much of your income should sit behind the Firewall, how long the rest carries the life you want, and what taxes and fees are quietly taking.
Bring your Social Security statement (from ssa.gov), recent statements for your retirement accounts, and the monthly income you want.
A finding, not a pitch.
Book a Retirement Income Diagnostic →For educational and informational purposes only. Not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice. Market figures replay S&P 500 total returns and bond returns (an even split of the 10-year U.S. Treasury and Baa corporate bonds; NYU Stern / Damodaran) together in their actual order. Stocks carry a 1.5% Activity Drag; every invested balance pays a 1% yearly fee. Savings hold the stock/bond mix you choose, rebalanced each year; the money that stays invested beside the Firewall keeps the same mix. Bonds earned unusually well from 2001 to 2021 as rates fell, which favors the market-only plan here. Spending, Social Security and pension are level unless the inflation option is on; then they rise each year by the rate shown. The Firewall’s income is level, or, with increasing income, starts lower and rises 2% a year at the carrier’s current rate (0.25% a year is guaranteed). The Firewall uses one A+-rated carrier’s published joint and single lifetime payout rates and rider terms as of November 3, 2026 (a 1.15% yearly rider charge on the benefit base and surrender charges in the first nine contract years); payout rates and terms change, and a live plan uses current figures. Only the lifetime income is guaranteed, subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurer; the annuity’s account value, death benefit and surrender value are illustrated at the credited rate you choose and are not guaranteed. Taxes are run as a terminal tax: what remains is taxed all at once in the year shown, at a lower rate (20% federal + 5% state by default) to stand in for heirs withdrawing it over ten years; income from savings is taxed at the same rate as it is paid. Past performance is not indicative of future results.