Understanding Which Assets Are Excluded from Your Chance of Success
The short answer
Boldin's Monte Carlo simulation — your Chance of Success — is built around your liquid assets: the accounts you can actually draw on to pay your bills. Things like vehicles, collectibles, and real estate equity are tracked in your plan but are not automatically spent down to fund retirement. This is by design.
What counts as a liquid asset?
Liquid assets are the accounts the model treats as available to cover your expenses over time. These include:
Retirement accounts (IRAs, 401(k)s, Roth accounts)
Taxable brokerage accounts
Cash and savings accounts (checking, money market, high-yield savings)
These are the accounts the simulation depletes — in a thoughtful, tax-efficient sequence — to fund your lifestyle through retirement.
What's excluded, and why?
Other Assets (vehicles, collectibles, jewelry, business interests, and similar holdings) and Real Estate Equity are not automatically liquidated in the simulation.
The reason is practical: these assets aren't typically spent to cover monthly expenses. You don't sell your car to pay your grocery bill. Including them as spendable would overstate your actual financial resilience.
Instead, they are:
Tracked as part of your net worth
Available to schedule — if you plan to sell an asset (like a home or vacation property), you can add a scheduled sale event in your plan, and those proceeds will flow into the simulation
Part of your legacy — any value remaining at your goal age shows up in your projected estate
What if my liquid savings run out?
If the simulation projects that your liquid savings are exhausted before your goal age, the model shows lifetime debt — a representation of the shortfall. It's not a failure state; it's useful information about how much you'd need to cover from somewhere.
Here's where it gets nuanced: if your excluded assets (like home equity) are worth more than that simulated debt at your goal age, you may still see a high Chance of Success. The model recognizes that you're not technically insolvent — you have assets — even though those assets aren't being drawn down automatically.
This is why two plans with similar Chance of Success numbers can look very different under the hood. One may be fully funded by liquid savings. Another may be partly relying on the implicit buffer of non-liquid wealth.
How to bring a non-liquid asset into the simulation
If you plan to sell a property, downsize, or liquidate another asset, you can model that directly:
Go to the asset in your plan (Real Estate or Other Assets)
Add or edit a scheduled sale
Set the year, expected proceeds, and any associated costs
Once a sale is scheduled, those proceeds become part of your liquid assets in the simulation — and your Chance of Success will reflect them.
A note on real estate equity specifically
Real estate is one of the most common "hidden buffers" in a retirement plan. For many people, a home represents significant wealth — but it's also where they live. Whether to count it as a retirement resource is a personal decision that involves lifestyle, legacy goals, and housing plans (downsizing, relocating, staying put).
Boldin lets you model both paths: keeping real estate as a non-liquid asset and legacy item, or scheduling a sale and folding those proceeds into your retirement funding. The choice stays with you.
Summary
Asset type | Included in Monte Carlo simulation? |
Retirement accounts (IRA, 401k, Roth) | ✅ Yes — drawn down to fund expenses |
Taxable brokerage accounts | ✅ Yes |
Cash and savings accounts | ✅ Yes |
Real estate equity (no scheduled sale) | ❌ No — tracked, not spent |
Other assets (vehicles, collectibles, etc.) | ❌ No — tracked, not spent |
Real estate with a scheduled sale | ✅ Yes — proceeds enter the simulation |
Have questions about how a specific asset is modeled in your plan? Reach out to our support team or search the Help Center for more.