The 1997 Robo-Advisor

A working Monte Carlo goal-probability simulator — the mechanism Financial Engines patented 13 years before Betterment existed.

Your plan

Current age 30 yrs

Retirement age 65 yrs

Current savings $50,000

Monthly contribution $500

Goal wealth at retirement $1,000,000

Portfolio risk

Conservative ↔ Aggressive 60 / 100

Stocks — mean 7% / vol 16% Bonds — mean 3.5% / vol 6% Cash — mean 1.5% / vol 1%

Simplification: annual steps only, and correlations between asset classes are ignored — each asset class draws its own independent random return every year, then the three are combined by portfolio weight.

Probability of reaching your goal

--%

Median wealth at retirement

5th percentile ("bad decade")

1,000 simulated paths — projected wealth

25th–75th percentile 5th–95th percentile Median path Goal Retirement

This is the patented mechanism: every time you move a slider, the engine re-runs 1,000 Monte Carlo simulations and instantly recomputes your probability of reaching your goal. That interactive what-if loop — change an input, see the odds update in real time — is exactly what claim 1 of US6021397 describes.