Understand an input, check an assumption or make sense of a result. Start with a topic or search the exact label you see in the planner.
Available in every version. The examples explain the model; they are not personal financial advice.6 answers
What to prepare and how to read your first result.
Have your latest pension and savings balances, gross contributions actually invested, intended retirement dates and your own public pension forecast. Decide on a monthly spending budget at today's prices. Use ages and amounts only; do not enter identifying details.
Enter the main figures, choose your assumptions, then select Update Plan. Start with Summary; open the detail when you need it.
Enter pounds, whole ages in years, and percentages as shown on the screen. Monthly means each month; annual means each year. Do not type a monthly pension forecast into an annual field.
Example Enter 2500 for £2,500, 0.5 for a 0.5% annual fee, and 2.5 for 2.5% inflation. A forecast of £200 a week is £10,400 a year using 52 weeks.
Enter your current age to run a plan. Leave an unused money field blank or enter 0; both mean no amount. Keep a valid start age for a pension even if its amount is zero, or remove an unused public pension card. Blank money fields do not estimate missing income for you.
The prefilled ages, rates and strategies are assumptions to review, not facts about you. A blank optional crash age means no extra crash in the central plan.
Future pounds are the amounts projected in accounts or paid in a future year. Today's money expresses their buying power at today's prices. The model calculates future amounts, then converts selected results for comparison. Inflation is not a second cash deduction from the pension.
Use Show amounts in on Summary or Scenarios to switch the overview, retirement projection and scenario comparisons between Today's money and Future pounds. The default is today's money. The one-page summary PDF follows this choice. This does not edit inputs, rerun the model or change income coverage. Cashflow and Investments keep their own clearly labelled money bases; the longer reports label theirs separately.
Example At 2.5% inflation, £2,500 a month today needs about £3,446 a month in 13 years to buy the same things.
No. It is an illustration of the numbers and assumptions you choose. It does not select suitable investments, verify your pension entitlement or promise that money will last. Review different assumptions and use appropriate qualified advice before making financial decisions.
Select Save plan to download a JSON file containing your main inputs and separate pension-target settings. This works in every version, including free, and can save an incomplete draft. Confirm the file is in your downloads before closing the tab.
Select Load plan, choose that file, review the summary and select Replace current plan. Loading clears old results. Select Update Plan, or Calculate pension target for that goal, to calculate again. Loading itself does not send figures to the server. An invalid file leaves your current inputs unchanged.
Plans are not saved online or automatically saved in browser storage. The file is not encrypted and contains financial figures: keep it private. It does not contain results or your browser-access credential. A PDF, CSV or purchase-reference file cannot be loaded as a plan.
Files saved by versions using schemas 1, 2 or 3 keep their original investment rates and retirement-based transition. New schema 4 files also store your independent transition choices. Loading does not automatically apply the new return preset.