RE: [lmi] An experimental change for withdrawal solves

[Boutin, Wendy]

Greg Chicares wrote:
> On 2009-02-02 03:06Z, Greg Chicares wrote:
> [...]
> > That's why we need to test this work carefully. Solves are subtle.

Using the same initial testcase parameters from Greg's
2009-02-01 22:06 email:

  File | New | Illustration
  solve for withdrawal
    from retirement
    to maturity

For all other parameters, just accept the default values,
which are fairly vanilla: male nonsmoker age 45, $1M specified
amount, annual premium $20K, and a generic default product.

I made this one input change:
    solve for target $0

and used 'idiosyncrasyT' to see these results from 'trace.txt':

  iteration 20 iterand 56387.68 value 0.64000000057149
  iteration 21 iterand 56387.69 value -1.879999999618121

Looks good so far.

Then 'ctrl-D' to copy the full illustration data and paste
the results into a spreadsheet. I observe:

  56387.68 is a level withdrawal in all years, and
  0.64000000057149 is the cash surrender value in the last year

These results are identical to the values above from 'trace.txt'.
This is good.

Now, just change the gender to male and look at what happens. I
see these results in the new 'trace.txt':

  iteration 21 iterand 61301.6 value 0.2200000000136697
  iteration 22 iterand 61301.61 value -1.530000000147084

The output from 'ctrl-d' reveals:

  61301.6 is level in all years except the last one: 56990.64
  6528.25 is the cash surrender value in the last year; not good

Why is there such a big difference in the withdrawal amounts
between all years and the last year? And the last year's cash
surrender value isn't even close to zero, which is inconsistent
with the output above from 'trace.txt', too.

Can you please help me understand why there's such an
inconsistency in the values when all I changed was the
gender?

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