Sustainable Spending
Your critical needs capital is the minimum wealth required to sustain your lifestyle — through recessions, bear markets, and a long life. Everything above it is surplus capital available for wealth transfer and legacy. This is the critical first step.
The Critical Needs Framework
Segment your wealth into two buckets — then manage each with purpose.
Quantify Your Spending
Determine your annual after-tax spending — including recurring charitable commitments. This is the lifestyle you want to sustain regardless of market conditions.
Stress-Test Across Scenarios
Run 2,000 simulated market paths including hostile markets, extended longevity, and inflation surprises. Critical needs capital is the amount that survives even the worst cases.
Unlock Your Potential
Everything above critical needs capital is surplus — available for GRATs, installment sales, PPLI, and other wealth transfer strategies. This is where legacy planning begins.
Why This Matters
Most families over-reserve — holding too much in conservative assets “just in case.” Quantifying critical needs capital precisely transforms the problem from “maximize upside” to “manage surplus risk.” A 60-year-old couple spending $500K/year may find their critical needs capital is ~$15.6M. If they have $50M, that's $34.4M of surplus available for tax-smart transfer right now.
~3.0%
Safe rate, age 55
~3.5%
Safe rate, age 65
~4.4%
Safe rate, age 75
Critical Needs Simulator
Find the minimum capital you need to sustain your lifestyle with high confidence.
Your Inputs
Adjust these to see how critical needs capital changes
How Altar Rock Can Help
Critical needs capital is the foundation of everything we do. Once we quantify it precisely, the rest of your wealth becomes actionable for tax-smart transfer.
Precise Quantification
We model your specific spending, asset mix, and tax situation — not generic rules of thumb.
Surplus Deployment
Once critical needs capital is identified, we deploy surplus into GRATs, installment sales, PPLI, and other structures.
Ongoing Monitoring
Critical needs capital changes as markets move, you age, and tax laws evolve. We recalculate regularly.
Multi-Generation Planning
Allocating surplus across generational buckets with age-appropriate risk — children, grandchildren, and beyond.
Explore More Calculators
Model different strategies to build a comprehensive wealth transfer plan.
This calculator is for illustrative purposes only. Critical needs estimates depend heavily on assumed market returns, inflation, mortality, and spending behavior. These are Monte Carlo simulations using stylized assumptions, not guarantees. Your actual required capital may differ significantly. Consult Altar Rock for a personalized analysis. Altar Rock LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser.