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Investing & Wealth Building
"Is my money working hard enough?"
Simulate investment strategies before committing capital — compound growth, lump sum vs. DCA, dividend income, and whether a stock is actually fairly priced.
10
simulators
Monte Carlo
probability-based, not just optimistic
Private
data stays in your browser
What questions can you answer?
Why not just ask an AI or use a robo-advisor?
AI gives you a plausible-sounding answer but can't show you the math behind it — and in investing, the assumptions matter as much as the formula. A robo-advisor makes decisions for you without showing the scenarios. These tools do the opposite: every calculation is transparent, every assumption is visible, and you can pull any slider to see exactly how the outcome changes. The goal is to build your own understanding, not to hand the decision to a black box.
All 10 simulators
Investment Strategy
5How to deploy capital — compound, DCA, value averaging, opportunity cost.
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Compound Interest
Visualize real returns after inflation. See the gap between nominal and real growth.
DCA vs Lump Sum
Invest all at once or spread it out? Monte Carlo simulation of both strategies.
Value Averaging vs DCA
Edleson 1988 Value Averaging vs DCA across five market regimes — terminal value, IRR, and peak monthly buy.
Opportunity Cost
What would this money be worth if invested instead of spent?
Investment Fee Drag
What fund expense ratios actually cost you over 30 years. Bogle's 1% argument made visible.
Pick & Build
2Stock valuation and dividend portfolios — the picking decisions.
Long-term Goals
3FIRE simulation and the debt-vs-invest tradeoff.
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FIRE Calculator
Monte Carlo simulation of your path to financial independence.
Loan Payoff vs Invest
Pay off debt faster or invest the extra? Which builds more wealth?
Roth vs Traditional
Apples-to-apples after-tax comparison with side taxable for the tax savings — when marginal rate differentials change the winner.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between nominal and real returns?
Nominal return is what shows on your brokerage statement — say, 8%/year. Real return is what you actually gain in purchasing power after inflation. If inflation is 3%, your real return is ~5%. Over 30 years, the difference is enormous: $100,000 at 8% nominal grows to $1M, but in today's dollars that's only ~$500K. Our compound interest calculator shows both curves so you can see the gap.
Should I invest all at once (lump sum) or spread it out (DCA)?
Historical data shows lump sum investing outperforms dollar-cost averaging about 2/3 of the time, because markets trend upward over time and waiting means missing growth. But DCA reduces the risk of investing right before a crash. If the lump sum represents most of your savings, DCA gives you psychological protection. Our DCA vs lump sum calculator uses Monte Carlo simulation across 10,000 scenarios to show the probability distribution of outcomes for both strategies.
How much do I need to invest to retire early?
The classic rule is to accumulate 25x your annual expenses (the '4% rule' — you can withdraw 4% of your portfolio annually with high probability of never running out). But this is a simplification. Our FIRE calculator runs Monte Carlo simulations across thousands of market scenarios to calculate your actual success probability at different portfolio sizes, spending levels, and retirement ages.
How do I know if a stock is overvalued or undervalued?
No single method tells you definitively. Professional analysts use multiple methods in parallel: P/E ratio (compare to historical average and peers), P/B (especially for financials), DCF (most theoretically sound, but depends heavily on growth assumptions), and dividend discount models (for income stocks). Our stock valuation tool runs all 11 methods simultaneously — you fill in the data you have and it unlocks the appropriate methods.
Is paying off debt the same as investing?
In a sense, yes — paying off a 5% loan is a guaranteed 5% return, while investing has variable returns. The question is whether your expected investment return exceeds your debt interest rate. If your mortgage is 3% and you expect 7% from stocks, investing is mathematically better — but stocks have volatility while debt payoff is certain. Our loan payoff vs invest tool lets you model both scenarios over 10–20 years.
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