Frequently asked questions
Is this financial advice?
No. This is an educational tool. It runs the same generic calculation for everyone and takes no account of your wider circumstances, so nothing here is financial advice or a personal recommendation. It makes no prediction about your future — it only replays history.
What about tax?
Tax is not modelled — this is the tool's biggest simplification. Income tax on pension withdrawals, the 25% tax-free lump sum, personal allowances, and the tax differences between accounts are all ignored. The yearly spending figure is simply money leaving the accounts, so a spending figure that already includes any tax due on pension income gives a more realistic test than a purely net-of-tax one.
Where does the data come from?
Bond, cash, inflation, and exchange-rate history comes from the Bank of England's “A Millennium of Macroeconomic Data for the UK” dataset. Equity returns are US stock-market total returns (the S&P Composite, from Robert Shiller's data) converted to sterling and adjusted for UK inflation. Coverage is 1871–2016 — the full methodology above has the details.
What about the State Pension?
The State Pension toggle is on by default at £12,548 a year — the 2026/27 full new State Pension (£241.30 a week) — starting at age 68. Both figures are illustrative starting points and editable: actual entitlement depends on a National Insurance record, and State Pension age depends on date of birth. From the start age it reduces the spending the portfolio has to fund, holding its value in real terms. Triple-lock rises above inflation are not modelled, which errs on the cautious side.
Why can't I touch my pension before 57?
Defined-contribution pensions can normally only be accessed from the “normal minimum pension age” — 55 today, legislated to rise to 57 from April 2028. The tool defaults to 57 (adjustable under Advanced). Before that age, the simulation draws only on cash and ISA savings, which is why early retirement ages can fail even when the pension is large.
What happens to my data?
Nothing is stored. The numbers entered are sent to the server once per calculation, used to compute the result, and never written to a database or to logs. There are no accounts and no cookies; analytics records event names only, never inputs or results.
How accurate is this?
It is a deliberately simplified model. Beyond tax (above): it covers a single person only; defined-benefit pensions and annuities are not modelled; spending is constant in real terms; the simulation moves in annual steps; equity returns are US returns in sterling terms rather than UK returns; and history runs 1871–2016. Above all, it only replays the past — past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
Where can I get actual advice?
For advice that takes personal circumstances into account, there are FCA-regulated financial advisers. Free impartial guidance is available from MoneyHelper and, for over-50s with a defined-contribution pension, Pension Wise.