Hi David, and welcome.

The conventional planning mode is not really the place to begin I guess. It has several uses perhaps, but one of them seems to be to show the folly of conventional planning. If you set your own target and get it wrong, then something has gotta give somewhere--because the program is going to spend all your available resources one way or another (including any Estate planning or special expenditures, etc.) So in your case, you set the target too low and the program is, in the short time it has prior to retirement, spending that money down so you an meet your target in retirement.

I know that seems kind of silly--but I guess the response is from the program, "this target doesn't work well; if you are going to spend so little later, I'm going to spend more now."

The place to begin is in economics mode. Let the program show you the smoothest sustainable discretionary spending (in Excel it's labeled as "consumption") pattern and its equivalent "living standard per adult." It's going to be higher than 180K I presume because of the snippet I see above.

So run it in economics mode--don't get bogged down in Monte Carlo mode--and return here with your questions.

Yes, there are several ways to keep yourself from spending down everything. In the retirement assets area notice that there's a setting to indicate what percent of the available assets will be spent for both husband and wife. It defaults to 100% but you could set it to 90% to create a buffer for example. And you can also use the estate area to model leaving money at the death of one or the other outside the family economy. But remember, that might also create an insurance need since that amount is assumed to be needed even if she (in this case) were to die next year. That money would not be assumed to be coming to you since it's an estate.

Some people create an end-of-life special expenditure.

The assumption (see assumptions) is that two live as cheaply as 1.6. So per-adult living standard times 1.6 should equal discretionary spending. But if there are children, then it's more complicated.

The default assumption is that you want to have the same living standard. I personally agree with this since I assume one kind of expense just gets substituted for another kind of expense as we age. But you can roll it down or up using the standard of living index in assumptions. I leave it at 100% all the way down.

Some people are short on regular assets and don't like seeing them all spent down in the short- or near-term. That may not be you, but if so, you'd see that running balance in the regular assets report.

There's pretty much ways to deal with everything; you just gotta fiddle with things and figure out where all the levers are.

The easiest way is to adjust the Standard of Living in the Assumptions tab. I describe a process for this in the comment to the link below describing a "safety factor" approach:

https://www.esplanner.com/question/monte-carlo

Most other options such as special expenditures or bequests can cause issues such as those you are seeing. This approach causes the program to reduce consumption until near end of life (or never if you decide not to spend it) which provides your cushion. It's very flexible to adjust to fit your specific needs.

Best,
Brian

And also just don't spend all your retirement assets:

In the retirement assets area notice that there's a setting to indicate what percent of the available assets will be spent for both husband and wife. It defaults to 100% but you could set it to 90% to create a buffer for example.

That will leave money unspent (along with the value of your home).

David, to duplicate the profile, highlight the profile and click Save as at the top menu, or right-click and select Save As.

David, it could be that spending only 50% of your retirement assets (not regular assets as you wrote) is still too much. What happens if you spend 0% of your retirement assets for both husband and wife? It's hard to guess at all the variables in your database. If the standard of living is largely generated from pensions or regular assets instead of retirement assets, then of course it's not going to have much impact. But modeling a very high living standard in the last five years of life or whatever as Brian suggests may do what you want.