While you're only adding money or leaving it alone, the order of good and bad years doesn't change where you end up: the same returns multiply to the same total in any order. Sequence of returns risk appears once money starts coming out. During decumulation — drawing down savings, often in retirement — each withdrawal made after a fall sells more units at low prices, and those units aren't there for the recovery.
So two people with the same average return can end up in very different places depending on whether the bad years came early or late, and heavy falls in the first years of withdrawals do the most lasting damage. This lesson describes the mechanism, not a withdrawal rate or a plan: those depend on circumstances that only you, or a regulated adviser, can weigh. The app doesn't model withdrawals.
£100k with £10k taken out after each year, the same two returns in a different order. Without the withdrawals, both end at £96k.
Educational content only. It is not personal financial advice.