Hi, I’m Dave Truett
I’m a husband, a father of three and a lifelong personal finance nerd. My professional career is in risk management, and it turns out that’s a good fit for this: planning retirement is really about managing the risks to your own financial future.
I’m 44, and my wife and I have been planning our retirement for the last 20 years. On the saving and investing side, we’re strong and on track. The part I’m focused on now is the other half: the withdrawal side. When the day comes that I can retire, I want to feel confident about how we’ll turn our savings into income, and how we’ll handle a bad market without panicking.
I built all of this testing for my own family first. When I went looking for something like it, I couldn’t find a tool that did this for the average person, so I decided to share it with everyone. Most of what the site does is free, and that’s the point.
Questions or ideas? Email me at [email protected]. I read every message.
What Century Tested is
Century Tested is a free retirement income planner and a set of calculators built around one idea: the best way to judge a retirement plan is to see how it would have held up through real markets, including the worst ones. Instead of a single average-return projection, our Retirement Replay engine runs your numbers through actual U.S. market history since 1928, nearly a century of markets.
The site focuses on the spending side of retirement: how much you can withdraw, how to adjust when markets fall, and how to avoid selling investments at the bottom. Our core tools cover the 4% rule, guardrails, the two-bucket strategy and a combined guardrail-bucket plan.
How we work
- Show the answer. Every calculator on this site gives you its full result without signing up.
- Calm, honest language. We describe results as “historically sustainable under these assumptions” and never promise that a plan is guaranteed. Past markets can’t promise future ones.
- Show our work. Our methodology lists every data source, rule and limitation.
- No commissions. We don’t sell investments or insurance. Century Tested is supported by optional paid features, never by product sales.
- Same rules for every strategy. Every plan, including our own combined guardrail-bucket plan, is tested on the same data, and we show where it falls short.
Who it’s for
People within about ten years of retirement who want to know how much they can spend, and people already retired who want a simple yearly check-in. If you work with a financial planner, our printable plan and advisor questions are designed to make that conversation more productive.
Disclosures
Century Tested is an educational tool, not financial, tax, legal or investment advice, and it is not a registered investment adviser. Results are hypothetical and based on historical index data that may contain rounding differences from the original sources. They ignore taxes and fees. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Please consider talking with a fiduciary financial professional before making decisions about your retirement.
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