Could you finish work earlier? Will your money support the life you want? What happens if markets fall? Start by exploring the choices that matter to you.
No plan uploadBuilt around UK taxIllustration, not advice
See what a plan could help you understand
Explore a fictional example before entering any figures. When you are ready, PlanWise.UK brings your spending, pensions, savings and estimated UK tax into one year-by-year picture.
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Illustration, not financial advice or a guarantee.
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Meet Alex, the couple Sam and Jo, and Morgan. These are fictional situations, not customer stories or promises. Try one change and see what the planner shows. Examples never replace your own plan.
Defaults to 100 minus the starting age, just like your plan. Ages shown are at the start of each year; a 40-year example from age 60 ends at age 100.
Enter a whole number of years from 1 to 82. The last valid example remains shown until corrected.
See the trade-off
Financial assets at each year end, in future pounds. The home is not included.
Starting exampleYour example adjustment
Example figures and assumptions
Calculated locally by the same financial engine as your own plan. All figures are illustrative assumptions, not typical balances, a verified State Pension entitlement or recommended returns. Year one uses the configured 2026/27 tax rules, followed by 2027/28 rules carried forward. No future tax-law changes or probability of success are predicted.
A clearer picture, at your own pace
Start with your life
Choose an everyday budget, then include the plans and one-offs that matter to you. You can start with estimates and refine them later.
Bring your money together
Add pensions, ISAs, investments, cash and other income. Guided setup explains each step; you can also go straight to the planner.
Explore your choices
Review the year-by-year picture, change assumptions and look for funding gaps. Use it to prepare questions for your pension provider or a regulated adviser.
You stay in control of your figures. No account is needed. Financial calculations and plan storage are local to your browser or desktop profile, with no automatic plan upload or cross-device sync. The website host can process ordinary request metadata separately.
PlanWise.UK does not encrypt local plan storage or exported files. Use a protected device and store backups securely. The privacy and storage notices above explain the details.
An illustration, not a promise. Results depend on the assumptions you enter. Actual returns, inflation, tax and personal circumstances can change. PlanWise.UK does not provide financial advice or guarantee that your money will last.
Using a shared computer? Tick “Use without saving” next to “Build my own plan” above before entering figures.
Temporary figures are lost on reload or close. Older saved plans remain until you use Finish & clear this device in the planner. Downloaded backups and reports must be removed separately.
How would you like to build your plan?
PlanWise.UK brings your retirement spending, pension income, savings and estimated UK tax together in a year-by-year illustration. See how long your money could last, where funding gaps appear and how different assumptions change the picture.
It is a planning tool, not financial advice or a guarantee. You can change every figure later. Use pension statements, your State Pension forecast and recent account balances where possible.
A little help along the way
Start with your basic details, then work through outgoings, pensions, ISAs, taxable investments and other savings. Add only what you hold; you can leave the guide at any time.
Explore at your own pace
Go straight to the main projection and use the section menu to enter or review your figures yourself.
Your existing figures are kept whichever route you choose. Valid edits save on this device; no account is needed. Empty account categories count as £0, while example State Pension and budget figures need your review.
Frequently asked questions
Understand your plan, the assumptions behind the numbers and how to keep your figures safe. Choose a topic, then open a question. Your plan stays unchanged while you read.
Getting started
What is PlanWise.UK for?
PlanWise.UK builds a year-by-year illustration of whether your pensions, other income and savings could cover your retirement spending. You can compare assumptions and see when a funding gap might appear.
It is not financial advice or a guarantee. It uses the future returns and spending you enter, not a probability of success. Tax rules, markets and personal circumstances can change.
What information do I need to begin?
Start with your age, how many years to model and an annual spending budget. Then use your State Pension forecast, pension statements, current investment and cash balances, and any other income. Check pension access ages and how much tax-free allowance you have left.
Choose Guided setup / getting started for a step-through, or go straight to your plan and use the section menu. Empty account categories count as zero. The example State Pension and selected living standard need your review; they are not verified entitlements or a personalised budget.
How do single and joint plans differ?
A joint plan gives each person their own pensions, investment ownership, tax bands and remaining pension tax-free allowance. Joint cash interest and modelled joint property gains are shared equally. The spending split determines who funds each share first; surplus income or eligible savings from the partner can help cover a gap.
Person 1's age sets the plan length, spending phases and property dates. Each person's pension access and other-income dates use their own age. Both people are assumed alive throughout: death, survivor benefits and marriage allowance are not modelled.
How should I enter spending, one-offs and later-life costs?
Use Plan setup for a living-standard benchmark or custom budget. Outgoings accepts monthly and annual items, plus one-offs and multi-year costs. Enter today's pounds; the plan inflates spending each year.
Spending over retirement can vary lifestyle spending by age and add later-life care costs. Scheduled costs are not phase-adjusted. Avoid counting the same rent, mortgage or other cost twice, and update your budget manually if a property move changes it.
Income & tax
What is the difference between DB and DC pensions?
A defined benefit (DB) pension is entered as gross annual income with a start age and annual increase. It is not a capital pot on the asset chart. A defined contribution (DC) pension is a balance you can draw down, with separate growth, access age and tax-free share for each pot.
State and DB pension increases compound from the plan start, including before payments begin. Enter amounts using that convention, and check your provider's rules rather than assuming the defaults apply to you.
How do I include rent or other regular payments?
In Pensions & savings, open Other income and add a named payment. Choose monthly or annual, its owner, start and end ages, and an annual increase. Both ages are inclusive, and each active row is a full year. Increases run from plan start, including before payments begin; general inflation is not added again.
Tick Taxable income for an amount before income tax, after deductible expenses. It uses the owner's non-savings income-tax bands and allowances. Leave it unticked for tax-free payments or amounts already net of tax. These receive no further tax charge or tax-band interaction in the model. Existing saved income remains unticked.
National Insurance, rental expense calculations and mortgage finance relief are not modelled. For already-net figures, allow for interactions with your other income yourself. Selling a property does not automatically stop a separate rental-income item.
Can I take tax-free pension cash at the start?
Yes. Each accessible DC pot can optionally pay a lump sum at the start, up to its available tax-free percentage and capped by the owner's remaining allowance. You can retain it in cash savings, invest in a new GIA or mark it spent outside the retirement plan.
The pension balance and remaining tax-free entitlement reduce so the same allowance is not used twice. Money spent elsewhere is removed from retirement assets, not deducted from your annual budget. This is a drawdown illustration, not advice about pension crystallisation or recycling.
Which tax years and regions does the planner use?
Model year one uses the configured 2026/27 rules; year two uses 2027/28, and that latest configured set is repeated thereafter. It does not automatically move the starting tax year with today's date. The selected tax region applies to both people in a joint plan.
Frozen thresholds stay fixed in pounds. Indexed thresholds and annual allowances rise with the plan's inflation assumption; tax rates and remaining pension lump-sum allowance do not. Tax is an estimate, not a tax-return calculation or prediction of future law.
Downturns & savings
Where does the downturn fund come from?
Set the target on Downturn analysis. It earmarks existing DC pension money in owner-matched money-market holdings; it does not add wealth or take money from cash or ISAs. The target is a gross pension amount, not guaranteed net spending money.
Internal allocation and growth create no immediate tax. Growth defaults to 3.5% and can be changed; it is an assumption, not a guaranteed yield. On withdrawal, each source pension's owner, access age, tax-free share and remaining allowance apply. If there are insufficient pensions or they are inaccessible, target or spending gaps remain.
How is the emergency fund different?
The emergency target under Pensions & savings allocates external cash from your existing assets. It earns the cash interest assumption and is used after other eligible funds. The downturn fund stays inside pensions and is used first during market falls and recovery.
Neither target is new money. Targets rise with inflation and do not automatically resize when you change spending. Refilling the pension downturn fund uses internal transfers from remaining DC investments in eligible positive-return years outside recovery.
What do the downturn and recovery controls change?
A market-return override replaces the selected year's price return for ordinary DC investments, stocks & shares ISAs and GIAs. GIA dividends remain separate. It does not change cash ISAs, external cash, pension money-market growth or property assumptions.
Assumed recovery targets the pre-fall market index over one to ten years. At 0, no catch-up return is calculated: normal entered returns apply, and the index may never recover. Reserve-first treatment continues while the index is below its recovery target. A 20% fall needs a 25% rebound to recover in one year. Explicit returns take priority. Recovery does not replace money already withdrawn or restore purchasing power.
Controls change the current plan; they are not a separate preview. Changes save unless you chose temporary mode. The dashed comparison removes all explicit yearly returns while keeping other settings. Setting the fall slider to zero removes that year's override.
What does automatic Bed & ISA do?
The model moves eligible investments into an ISA each year. Selling investments may create a tax bill. This moves money you already hold; it does not add new savings.
Check your remaining ISA allowance before making real transactions. The planner does not track other ISA payments, dealing charges or eligibility.
How this is calculated
For each person, the model sells investments outside ISAs with the smallest gain as a proportion of their value first, up to the modelled annual ISA allowance. Before annual returns, the proceeds move into a stocks & shares ISA owned by the same person. Any realised gain joins that person's Capital Gains Tax calculation for the year.
Understanding results
Why are withdrawals larger than my spending gap?
Taking money from a pension or selling investments may create tax. The model takes enough to cover both the spending gap and that tax, if enough money is available. It can also take money to set up or top up the emergency fund.
“Tax-free pension part”, “Taxable pension part” and “From downturn pension fund” are already included in “Pension money taken”. Do not add them again. “Pension moved into downturn fund” is an internal transfer, not spending money or new savings.
Why can I have a funding gap while assets remain?
Some DC money may be locked until its owner's access age. A balance on the chart is not necessarily available to pay today's spending. A gap means the year's need cannot be met after eligible income, withdrawals and emergency cash.
The model does not automatically borrow or sell your home to cover it. Review the first gap year, pension access ages, spending and any enabled property transaction rather than relying only on the final balance.
What do today's money and future pounds mean?
Future pounds are nominal amounts in each model year. Today's money removes the assumed effect of inflation so you can compare purchasing power. Annual income, spending and tax use the year's start inflation factor; closing balances use its end factor.
The view switch changes presentation, not your saved assumptions or underlying financial calculation. Displayed figures are rounded independently, so rounded columns may not add exactly to a rounded total.
Is Top-ranked in this model the best strategy for me?
Top-ranked in this model compares eight fixed withdrawal policies over your entered future path. It ranks unfunded spending first, then reserve/emergency target gaps, after-tax end wealth and lifetime tax. It is a bounded model comparison, not personalised advice or a guarantee of a global optimum.
Higher/lower growth scenarios change eligible market-return assumptions by two percentage points. They do not measure a probability of success or capture every market risk.
Can I safely spend the maximum affordable amount?
The maximum-spending search finds a budget that is funded in every year under the selected assumptions, to a penny-sized numerical boundary. It varies lifestyle spending while retaining separately held housing, care, scheduled costs and targets.
It is not a safe withdrawal rate. It allows eligible funds to be exhausted and assumes no minimum inheritance. Actual returns, inflation, longevity and unexpected costs can differ. The figure is not applied automatically.
What does after-tax end wealth include?
It estimates a hypothetical sale of remaining GIAs and withdrawal of all DC funds, including the pension reserve, in the next model year. It uses remaining allowances and that year's State/DB and taxable other income, and deducts the incremental liquidation tax.
This tax is not actually taken from projected balances. Locked pensions are valued on the same hypothetical basis, not made accessible. A gradual real withdrawal plan could have a different tax bill. The home and its loan are excluded from financial-asset totals and shown separately where modelled.
Your data & exports
Do I need an account, and where is my plan saved?
No account is required. By default, valid edits save in this browser—not an online backup. There is no application plan upload or automatic cross-device sync. Choose Use without saving to keep figures only in the open page's memory; reloading or closing discards them. An older saved plan is left untouched until you clear it.
Finish & clear this device removes this site's saved plans and the open plan after confirmation. It cannot remove downloaded files or backups. The website host may process ordinary request metadata such as an IP address, browser details and timestamps to deliver and secure the site.
Are my figures encrypted?
PlanWise.UK does not encrypt browser or desktop plan storage, or JSON, CSV and PDF exports. Anyone who can use the same device/profile may be able to access the plan. Use device security, a protected profile and suitably encrypted storage for backups.
Clearing site data, private browsing or changing browser/profile can remove access to the saved copy. Export a JSON backup before changing devices or clearing data. The welcome page's Privacy notice and How your data is stored explain the distinction between local plan data and hosting metadata.
Which export should I use?
JSON: a complete editable-plan backup, restored with Import plan. Use this to move a plan between browsers or devices. Import replaces the current plan after confirmation.
CSV: detailed annual projection figures for a spreadsheet, in the selected money basis. PDF: a noneditable summary report of up to six pages; long lists may be sampled. CSV and PDF cannot restore an editable plan. Store every export securely because it contains financial information.
Why have results stopped updating or exports become unavailable?
An empty, out-of-range or inconsistent input can leave the last valid projection marked stale. Correct the highlighted error before treating it as a new result. Invalid edits are kept on screen, but do not replace the valid saved plan or allow a current export.
If local storage is unavailable or full, the app reports that saving failed. Do not rely on an unsaved session; export a valid JSON backup when possible.
What does Full reset delete?
The sidebar's Full reset deletes current and older app plan copies in this browser profile and replaces them with a fresh example after confirmation. It also clears retained invalid edits.
It cannot remove downloaded JSON, CSV or PDF files, device backups or copies elsewhere. Export a JSON backup first if you may want to restore the current plan. Reset is not a way to delete data on other devices.
Illustration only — not financial advice. Outcomes are not guaranteed. Check your own pension statements, current tax guidance and provider rules before taking action.
Plan setup
Tell us about your household and choose a budget.
Getting started — build an illustration from your own figures
See when your budget is covered by the income and savings you enter, and where a gap remains. Start with these three steps:
Review Plan setup. Check ages, duration and spending below.
Review pensions & savings. Replace the example State Pension, confirm access ages and add only accounts you hold.
Explore the projection. Check the graph and first funding gap. Optional property, spending phases and downturn settings can wait.
Empty account categories count as £0. Your information stays on this device.
New to retirement planning? A few helpful terms
Gross means before tax; net means after tax. Inflation is the rise in prices over time, so the same amount of money may buy less later.
A defined benefit (DB) pension pays a regular, usually guaranteed income. A defined contribution (DC) pension is a savings pot whose value can rise or fall.
An ISA is a tax-free savings account. A General Investment Account (GIA) is an investment account where tax may apply. The lump-sum allowance limits how much pension money can be taken tax-free under the model.
Property choices are optional illustrations. Bed & ISA moves investments into an ISA and can create a taxable gain; it is not a separate contribution.
Spending over retirement
Adjust spending and later-life care by age.
Outgoings
List regular bills, one-offs and costs that last a set number of years.
Property & equity release
Explore how a lifetime mortgage could affect your plan. Visiting this screen does not enable borrowing.
Equity release & remaining property value
How property and debt are shown
This summary follows the main plan's money display. Property is not spendable cash. Investment charts, End assets and strategy rankings show financial pots only, excluding the home and secured debt. Home value less loan is an uncapped illustration and can be negative; it is not an estimate of what your estate must repay. Any no-negative-equity guarantee, sale costs and product-specific protections are not applied here. Check the actual contract with an adviser. The home is not sold and the loan is not repaid automatically at the end of the horizon or when modelled care spending starts.
Downsizing your home
See how much a move to a smaller or cheaper main home could release after costs. Nothing is added to your plan unless you switch it on.
Selling a second home
Estimate the money left after selling a property that is not your main home, including tax. Nothing is sold in your plan unless you switch this on.
Downturn analysis
See how a market fall could affect your plan, with part of your DC pension set aside in a money-market fund.
Pensions & savings
Add the pensions, investments and cash you hold.
2026/27 & 2027/28 tax rules
Getting started — check your pensions and savings
Use your State Pension forecast and pension statements. Add an ISA, investment account or cash balance only if you hold one. An empty category means £0 in this illustration; it is not a request to open an account.
In a joint plan, check each person's accounts and pension access ages. Cash is shared. Cash-pot targets allocate existing assets; they are not extra savings.
Results
See how long your money could cover your spending.
Add your pensions and savings to see your projection
Your new plan has an example budget and State Pension, but no savings yet. Add your own figures before interpreting the results.
Your assets over time
End-of-year balances, with your starting point at the left.
Balances include pensions you may not be able to use yet and are shown before future withdrawal tax. A balance on this chart does not mean it is available for spending.
This is one calculated path using your assumptions, not a probability of success. “Covered” does not mean a budget is safe or that money will last in real life.
How this is calculated
For free, impartial help, visit MoneyHelper. Aged 50 or over with a UK DC pension? Pension Wise offers free guidance on your pension options.
Starting assets
DC + ISAs + GIA + existing cash; before equity release
Spending covered
Assets at end
Explore a budget for the full period
This is a spending-limit test for one assumed future, not a suggested budget, a probability of success or a safe spending limit. Accessible funds may run down to zero; no minimum inheritance is assumed. Your plan is not changed.
What the maximum-spending estimate includes
Estimated maximum base annual budget in today's pounds, before your spending phases, whether that means spending less to close a gap or more to use a surplus. Only lifestyle spending is adjusted: separate housing top-up, later-life care, phase percentages, inflation, pensions, taxes, investments, cash targets, downturns, recovery and chosen equity release stay unchanged. Housing already included within a CSV lifestyle total varies with that total. Uses the selected growth scenario and withdrawal strategy; Top-ranked in this model re-compares its policies at each trial budget. Checks every year, not just the final balance, so money can be left at the end when an earlier year is the limit. Cash pots may be exhausted; no minimum inheritance is assumed, and your home is never counted. Capped at the £10,000,000 annual budget limit. A numerical estimate under your assumptions, not a guaranteed safe withdrawal amount or global optimum. Your plan is not changed.
Your reserves & withdrawal plan
Initial downturn pension reserve
Initial emergency pot
End after-tax wealth estimate
Compare withdrawal strategies
Strategy
Unfunded spending
Cash target gaps³
Lifetime tax
End after-tax wealth
Comparison values always use today's money. ³ Sum of annual reserve target gaps, not a spending loss. Rank: least unfunded spending, then least target gaps, then highest after-tax end wealth. Bold row is selected.
Withdrawal strategy
“Top-ranked” only identifies the first of eight fixed strategies under this model's scoring and your assumptions. It is not a personal recommendation or evidence that the strategy will work best for you.
How strategies differ
Every strategy observes the cash-pot rules. “Minimum tax” searches current-year allocations; “Top-ranked in this model” compares whole-horizon strategies. Neither guarantees a global optimum. Changes apply immediately.
The year-by-year picture
Age / year
Income before modelled tax
Spending
Tax
Funding gap
End assets
The pension parts and money from the downturn fund are already included in “Pension money taken”. Do not add them again. Money moved into the downturn fund stays inside your pension.
How this is calculated: withdrawals and rounding
“Taxable pension part” is income before personal allowances, not the tax bill. Closing pension investment balances exclude the separately displayed downturn fund; total assets count both once. Cash totals exclude that pension fund. Values are rounded independently to whole pounds.
Swipe or scroll sideways to see every column.
Age / year
Market return
Spending
State + DB
Interest + div.
Pension money taken
Tax-free pension part
Taxable pension part
ISA money taken
Investments sold outside ISAs
Cash savings used
From downturn pension fund
Emergency money used
Pension moved into downturn fund
Tax¹
Funding gap²
End downturn fund / target
End emergency / target
End ISA
End assets
ER net cash
ER interest added
End ER loan
End home value
Home less loan (uncapped)
Downsizing costs
Downsizing released
Second-home selling costs
Second-home gain
Second-home released
One-off / period spend
Tax P1
Tax P2
Bed & ISA moved
Start tax-free lump sum
Lump sum to savings
Lump sum to GIA
Lump sum spent elsewhere
Other income receipts
Know what is behind the numbers
Open a topic to see how its figures are calculated.
Reports, backups and spending setup
PDF report, plan backup and CSV. Export report (PDF) downloads a noneditable six-page overview on your device, with no financial-data upload or print dialog. Long lists and annual tables may be abbreviated; plan backups and CSV retain full detail. It uses the current valid plan and growth scenario. Invalid retained edits pause exports until corrected. Every page states: Illustration only — not financial advice. Outcomes are not guaranteed. Export plan restores an editable plan; Export CSV provides annual data. Store these personal financial files securely.
Annual spending. Plan setup sets ages, core assumptions and the annual budget. Outgoings itemises regular costs, including housing, and scheduled items. CSV costs are annualised (monthly × 12; yearly × 1), using penny precision. Confirmed CSV import sets a Custom budget and keeps phases. Changing annual spending, household size or living standard replaces the item breakdown; starting-point and phase-only edits preserve it. Regular costs follow spending phases; care is added from the later phase. Existing fixed housing portions remain separate until their budget is replaced. Inflation applies once from the plan start. Care and housing costs are assumptions, not forecasts or entitlements. Phase boundaries stay fixed when starting age changes. Cash targets remain independent of spending.
Annual timing and property transactions
Annual model. Each row is a full year, starting at your chosen age, with no partial-year apportionment. Year-one reserve funding happens before investment returns. Its tax provision is reconciled with all other income and withdrawals in that same model year, not given a separate annual allowance. Growth, interest and dividends use balances after initial funding; subsequent spending and reserve refills occur at year end. Income pays spending and tax, and surplus income goes to cash. Withdrawals include spending, initial reserve funding and subsequent refills; transfers do not create assets. No gross employment-tax calculation, contributions, benefits or inheritance tax are modelled. Property is included only through the optional equity-release, downsizing and second-home sale settings.
Other income. Tick Taxable income to enter gross receipts before income tax, after deductible expenses; they join the owner's non-savings income for allowances, tapering and tax-band calculations. Unticked items are tax-free or already net of tax, with no additional tax or tax-band interaction modelled. Existing saved items stay unticked. Monthly amounts multiply by 12. Owner ages are inclusive and increases compound from plan start, without adding general inflation again. Receipts reduce withdrawal needs; tax is funded through the normal annual calculation and surpluses enter cash at year end. No National Insurance, rental expense calculation or mortgage finance relief is modelled. Selling a property does not automatically stop a separate rental-income item. The receipts column is before modelled tax on taxable items; CSV separates taxable and tax-free/already-net receipts.
Equity release. When enabled, a chosen net lump sum enters cash once at the start, before reserves and returns. Gross borrowing equals that cash plus the old mortgage repayment and financed fees. Borrowing itself is not taxable income; interest earned on the released cash uses the existing savings-tax model. The fixed effective annual loan rate compounds for every complete model year with no repayments; property grows at its separate nominal rate, unaffected by the investment scenarios. The horizon is not a lifetime-mortgage maturity date: actual repayment triggers such as the last borrower's death or permanent move into care are not simulated. Loan interest is capitalised, not deducted from spending or tax. Home value less debt is displayed separately without a no-negative-equity cap or sale costs. Financial-asset metrics include any unspent released cash, but exclude the house and loan and must not be read as total net wealth. The same property and debt path applies to every withdrawal policy, so neither is included in strategy ranking. Existing mortgage payments in your budget must be removed manually if repaid by the release.
Property downsizing. When enabled, the sale and purchase complete at the start of the chosen year, before returns and spending; at the plan's start this is before reserve funding. Prices grow from today's values at the house-price rate. Costs are the estate-agent percentage plus VAT, sale and purchase solicitor fees plus VAT and other costs (all inflation-linked), and SDLT on the purchase price at England/NI main-residence rates from the versioned tax-year rules. Released money = sale − purchase − costs − outstanding mortgage − any equity-release loan (repaid before that year's interest). It is not taxable income; the main-home gain is assumed exempt. It goes to surplus cash or a new General Investment Account whose cost basis equals the amount invested. A negative release is rejected. Downsizing uses the same inputs for every strategy and is included in the maximum-spending search. Spending, including housing costs, does not change automatically.
Cash buffers, downturns and recovery
Reserve protection. New plans have no reserve targets. Set a pension-held downturn fund on Downturn analysis and an external emergency cash target under Pensions & savings. The downturn target is a gross pension allocation, not net spending money: assets move proportionally from existing DC pots into owner-matched money-market holdings with the same access ages and tax-free shares. No pension withdrawal or income tax is triggered by this internal transfer. Its annual growth defaults to 3.5%, can be edited and is not guaranteed; growth is sheltered inside the pension and unaffected by market overrides, recovery or growth scenarios. Withdrawals use the owner's remaining tax-free entitlement and income-tax bands, with gross-up to fund tax. Without enough DC assets, a target gap remains; cash and ISAs cannot fund it. Each target rises with inflation independently of spending edits. Accessible reserves are used first during market falls and recovery, otherwise after other accessible investments, before emergency cash. Pension refills transfer remaining DC investments internally only in positive-return years outside recovery after spending. The emergency target uses cash or taxable asset sales; the optional suggested amount is 50% of annual spending. Targets add no wealth, and all gaps remain explicit.
Investment recovery. A downturn is a negative opening-balance-weighted total return across DC, stocks & shares ISAs and GIA, including GIA dividends. A cash-flow-independent nominal market index starts at 100. Recovery targets its level immediately before the downturn, not the wealth you would have had without the downturn, inflation-adjusted purchasing power or amounts already withdrawn. With a 1-10 year assumption, absent an explicit override, one common price return is calculated so that the index compounds back over the remaining years; weighted GIA dividend yield is deducted to avoid double counting. At 0 (no forced recovery), normal entered returns apply without catch-up returns and recovery may never happen; remaining scheduled recovery years is reported as 0 because there is no schedule. Cash ISAs are excluded. Explicit returns take priority. A further fall restarts the chosen schedule but keeps the original target. The downturn pot is used first and refills are paused while below target, including the completion year. Running out of invested assets ends recovery without creating assets. These returns are modelling assumptions, not promises.
Strategy comparison and after-tax end wealth
Minimum tax versus model ranking. Minimum-tax mode compares 24 allocation recipes at each funding stage: six GIA/ISA/DC orders, with optional use of the pension personal allowance, GIA capital-gains allowance, or both. It first funds the requested amount and avoids emergency use, then selects the lowest incremental current-year tax; ties prefer retaining assets with higher assumed returns. It is a bounded search, not an exact continuous tax optimiser. Top-ranked in this model mode compares eight full-horizon policies (including minimum-tax mode and pension basic-band harvesting). It ranks spending coverage first, reserve-target coverage second, then after-tax terminal wealth. It selects one policy for the whole horizon, using the entered return schedule with hindsight. It does not dynamically optimise every year's allocation across all possible paths.
After-tax end wealth. This comparison estimates a one-off liquidation of remaining GIA and all DC pots in the next model year, using a fresh set of annual allowances, remaining pension tax-free allowance, carried losses and that year's State/DB and taxable other income. It deducts incremental tax above that regular-income baseline. ISA and cash principal remain tax-free. DC funds still locked at that point are valued on the same hypothetical basis, not assumed accessible. A real multi-year withdrawal plan may pay substantially less tax. This valuation is not deducted from the projected balances or included in the lifetime-tax column.
Tax rules and future uncertainty
¹ Estimated taxes. Includes pension income tax, taxable cash interest, dividends and realised GIA gains; ISA returns and withdrawals are excluded. Baseline personal allowance is £12,570, tapered above £100,000. England/Wales/NI pension rates are 20% / 40% / 45%; Scotland uses 19% / 20% / 21% / 42% / 45% / 48%. Savings use UK bands, the £5,000 starting-rate band and £1,000 / £500 / £0 savings allowances; savings rates are 20% / 40% / 45% in 2026/27 and 22% / 42% / 47% from 2027/28 (Finance Act 2026), including for Scottish taxpayers. Dividends use a £500 allowance and 10.75% / 35.75% / 39.35%. CGT uses a £3,000 exemption and 18% / 24% rates. In-model capital losses carry forward. Personal allowance is allocated to pensions, then savings, then dividends.
Future rules are uncertain. Model year one uses 2026/27 rules and year two onward uses the legislated 2027/28 rules, repeated for later years; unannounced future changes are not modelled. The fixed option keeps thresholds at their frozen cash values (currently legislated until April 2031). The indexed option inflates annual thresholds and allowances from year two; rates and the remaining pension lump-sum allowance do not inflate. Neither is a prediction of future law. Protected pension allowances, tax reliefs, tax-code timing, emergency tax, foreign income, bond funds taxed as interest and complex capital-gains pooling rules are excluded.
Funding gaps, today's money and model limitations
² Unfunded means spending or tax that eligible assets could not cover. It is not carried forward as debt; balances never become negative. Both cash pots and all other accessible funds are exhausted before a shortfall is reported, but inaccessible DC funds may remain. “Spending covered” counts years until the first gap, not a guarantee of lifetime solvency. Reserve-target gaps are tracked separately from spending shortfalls.
Today's money. Year-one cash flows are unadjusted; year-two cash flows are discounted by one year's inflation. End balances are discounted by the number of completed years. Assets include gross DC balances, not their after-tax liquidation value.
Illustration, not advice. Returns use your annual assumptions, optional year-specific overrides and calculated recovery returns. Lower/higher-growth scenarios shift ordinary and explicitly overridden DC, share-ISA and GIA price returns by 2 percentage points. Calculated recovery returns instead adjust to the resulting loss and remaining recovery period; they are not shifted again. Cash-ISA rates, cash interest, GIA dividend yield and inflation are unchanged. Return sequences are illustrative, not market forecasts or probabilities. Re-run with different downturn dates, sizes and recovery periods. No strategy guarantees maximum wealth. Care costs and longevity beyond the chosen horizon are not forecast.
