Practice Navigator Contest

Objective

The objective is to sustain the maximum possible investment income withdrawal rate for 30 years.

Disclaimer

The maximum withdrawal rates that can be achieved with Practice Navigator depend upon the investment rates of return that the Monte Carlo algorithm generates.  We have strived to design the algorithm such that it generates rates of return that mirror actual historic stock market patterns.  However past performance is never a guarantee of future results.  Future rates of return may be lower than the rates of return that the software generates.

We don't advocate pushing the withdrawal rate to the outer limits in the real world.  But within the context of a game, it is a measure of strategy and skill.  We hope to illuminate the techniques that will also serve investors well for successfully maintaining a more practical level of investment income.

Contest Rules

1. You must use the most current version of Practice Navigator (version 3.02).
2. You must use the Advanced Version tab of the Practice Navigator Excel file.
3. You can use any Beginning Capital value and corresponding Initial Income value that you like.  Withdrawal Rate = (Initial Income / Beginning Capital) X 100%
4. A qualifying withdrawal rate must be at least 0.01 higher than the previous record.  So for example if the current record for a given difficulty level is a withdrawal rate of 5.00%, your entry must be at least 5.01% to qualify as a new record.
5. The Inflation rate must be set to 3.0% .
6. The Fixed-Rate Return must not exceed 4.0%.
7. The High-Yield Dividend rate must not exceed 5.0% and the Blue-Chip Dividend rate must not exceed 3.0%.
8. You must not adjust the income from it's original value.  In other words the goal is to see if you can maintain steady income increasing 3% per year for 30 years.
9. You must NOT use the Repeat feature to re-run the same scenario!  Yes, we know this makes it much harder.  But if one knows the rates of return or even the difficulty level in advance, it is unrealistically easy to navigate the scenario.  This means that you will have to choose a withdrawal rate without knowing the difficulty level of the upcoming scenario...just like real-life!

When the above contest rules are followed, the withdrawal rate shown at the top of the Income column will be displayed as green text.

Submissions

To submit a record withdrawal rate, save a copy of the Practice Navigator Excel file and email it to: highscore@isgplanning.com along with your name as you would like it displayed.  Once validated we will post your name along with a screen shot of your winning strategy.  

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