Sequence-of-returns risk

The asymmetry

While you're saving, a crash early in your career is a gift — decades of buying cheap. Once you're withdrawing, the arrow flips. Selling shares into a downturn locks in losses the recovery can't repair, because the shares you sold at the bottom aren't there to recover. A bad first five years can sink a plan whose 30-year average return looks perfectly healthy; the same bad years arriving late are barely a bump.

This is why WorthCurve simulates the drawdown month by month instead of applying an average, and why every chart carries a conservative band. An average hides exactly the years that matter most.

What actually helps

• Bridge income. Any earned income in the early post-pivot years directly reduces what you must sell in a downturn — the single most effective defense, and a quiet advantage of work-less and next-endeavor paths over a hard stop.
• A cash buffer. One to three years of net spending in cash means a bear market becomes something you wait out rather than sell into.
• Flexible spending. Cutting 10–15% in bad years dramatically extends survival. Build the flexibility into the plan by knowing which spending is actually optional.
• Later guaranteed income. Social Security or a pension arriving at 67 shortens the window in which sequence risk can hurt you — a reason to model those streams properly rather than ignoring them.
• A margin, upfront. Retiring at a slightly lower withdrawal rate (3.5% vs 4%) is pre-paying for sequence risk. See safe withdrawal rates.

What WorthCurve does and doesn't model

WorthCurve doesn't run Monte Carlo return sequences — deliberately. Instead it shows a conservative case (lower returns, higher inflation, all the way through) and flags when that case runs dry. It's a blunter instrument than a probability cloud, and easier to reason about: if your plan holds in the conservative band andyou keep one of the defenses above, sequence risk is respected without pretending it's been computed away.