Your retirement plan
A year-by-year projection of retirement income, tax, and how long the money is likely to last.
This document is an illustration, produced from the figures entered and a set of published assumptions listed in full on the final page. It is not a personal recommendation, a quotation, or a promise of what will actually be received. Real investment returns, inflation, tax rules and personal circumstances will differ from those assumed here — possibly by a wide margin — and the figures may contain errors. Before making any decision about pensions, savings or retirement income, seek advice from an FCA-regulated financial adviser.
Contents1 — Your money2 — What you want3 — Your plan4 — Assumptions & sources
Step one
What you have
Rough figures are fine to begin with. Everything can be changed later, and nothing leaves this computer.
Who the plan is for
About you
Under current rules, most people can't access a pension before age 55. Raise the retirement age, or confirm below if this is a genuine exception.
A fixed amount stays the same in cash terms, so its buying power falls a little further every year it's in payment.
Under current rules, most people can't access a pension before age 55. Raise the retirement age, or confirm below if this is a genuine exception.
A fixed amount stays the same in cash terms, so its buying power falls a little further every year it's in payment.
Risk and cost
How the money is invested
You do not have to keep the same level of investment risk forever. Choose how the pension is invested now, then whether you want to change the approach as retirement gets closer or begins.
How is the pension invested now?
This is the risk level used while you are building the pot.
Choose the age to change investment approach
We default this to your planned retirement age. Move it earlier if you want to reduce risk in the run-up to retirement, or later if you want to stay invested the same way for longer.
How should the pension be invested after that?
This risk level is used from the age above through retirement.
What you pay in charges — and why it matters
Charges come out of your pot every year, so a projection that ignores them is not worth much. The regulator requires all charges to be deducted before any projection is shown. If you don't know your platform and fund figures, a reasonable fallback is 0.55% a year between the two.
Adviser detail
Assumptions
Defaults follow the regulator's projection rules. Change them if you can justify something different — every figure below is used exactly as entered.
Step two
What you want it to pay you
Two decisions shape everything: how much you want each month, and how you'd like the money taken out.
The number that matters
Your desired monthly income
The net amount, after tax, you'd like to land in your account, in today's prices.
The planner will endeavour to get as close to this as possible within the approach and settings you choose below, and within UK pension rules — it's a goal it works towards, not a promise.
State Pension and any final salary pension are fixed and can't be reduced, so if they alone already cover your reduced desired income, actual income won't fall by the full percentage you've set here.
How the money comes out
ISAs, savings and tax-free cash
These choices apply whichever approach you pick below.
How the money comes out
Choose your approach
Each one is a recognised way of taking retirement income. You can switch between them and compare the results.
Taking taxable income flexibly from a pension — which this approach does at some point in the plan — drops the most you (or an employer) can pay into any pension each year to £10,000, from then on. Worth knowing if you're still planning to contribute after retirement.
Optional
One-off amounts
A new car, a wedding, clearing the mortgage, or a lump sum going in. These are treated as extra spending on top of your monthly income.
Nothing planned yet — most people leave this blank at first.
Step three
Your retirement plan
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Year by year
Where your income comes from
Each bar is a year of retirement, in today's money. The dark line is what actually reaches your bank account after tax.
Try it live
Quick changes — see them on the chart above
Shortcuts for the levers that move the numbers most. Change one and everything above updates immediately. For the full set of options and how each one works, go back to .
The detail
Every year, in full
The same numbers behind the chart. Click any row to look at that year on the chart.
Stress test
What if markets misbehave?
The plan above assumes steady growth every year. Real markets don't work like that, and a bad run early in retirement does lasting damage. This runs your plan through a thousand different orders of returns.
Not run yet. It takes a second or two and doesn't change your plan.
Sense check
What your annual statement would say
Your provider's yearly statement uses a different rulebook from a planning projection. Both are shown here so you can see why the numbers differ.
Worth knowing
Things to look at
Adviser detail
Assumptions, methods and sources
Everything this plan relies on, in one place, so it can be checked.
Important — please read
This is not financial advice. Retirement Planner produces an illustration based on the figures entered and the published assumptions set out above. It is not a personal recommendation, a regulated financial promotion, or a guarantee of what anyone using it will actually receive.
Every figure here is a projection, not a forecast. Real investment returns, inflation, tax rules, life expectancy and personal circumstances will all differ from those assumed — potentially by a wide margin — and small changes to any one of them can materially change the outcome. This calculator may also contain errors, and its results should be checked, not relied on alone.
Before making any decision about pensions, savings or retirement income, seek advice from a professional financial adviser regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Nothing in this document is, or should be treated as, a substitute for that advice.
Quick and built in, but tied to this browser on this device — clearing its data or switching devices loses it.
A file you keep yourself — works on any device, and is the way to send a copy to someone else. On a computer it lands in your usual Downloads folder; on a phone it's normally saved to a "Files" or "Downloads" app (Android) or the Files app (iPhone/iPad) — from there you can email it to yourself or use your phone's share button to move it somewhere else.
Everything above happens on this device. Nothing here is uploaded or sent anywhere.
Tool
What might retirement cost you?
List what you spend now, then flag anything that stops or changes once you retire — a mortgage that gets paid off, a second car you no longer need for commuting. What's left is a rough monthly figure to plan around.
Before you start
Budgeting alone, or with a partner?
If you split bills with someone, this lets you mark each one as shared or personal, so you can each see your own share.
Take it with you
Save a copy, or start over
This is already saved to this browser as you go — a downloaded copy also lets you keep it, move it to another device, or reset back to the starter list.
On a computer, "Download a copy" lands in your usual Downloads folder; on a phone it's normally saved to a "Files" or "Downloads" app (Android) or the Files app (iPhone/iPad) — from there you can email it to yourself or use your phone's share button to view it on another device.
Important information
What this is, and what it is not
Please read this before you rely on anything here. It is the most important page on the site.
This site is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Nothing on it is regulated financial advice, tax advice or legal advice, and nothing on it is a personal recommendation. Using this planner does not create an adviser–client relationship of any kind.
What the planner actually does
It takes the figures you type in and does arithmetic with them. It applies published UK income tax, National Insurance and State Pension rules for the current tax year, projects your pension and savings forward at growth and inflation rates you can see and change, and shows you what the result would look like year by year.
That is all it does. It has no knowledge of your actual pension scheme, the charges you actually pay, what your money is actually invested in, your health, your family circumstances, your tax position, or anything else about you. It has not assessed whether anything shown here is suitable for you, because it cannot.
Every figure here is an illustration, not a forecast
Projections are not predictions. Real investment returns, inflation, tax rules, pension legislation and how long you live will all differ from what has been assumed here — potentially by a wide margin. Small changes to any one of those can change the outcome substantially. The value of investments can go down as well as up, and you could get back less than you put in.
The assumptions used are shown on the results page and can all be changed. Please change them and see how much the answer moves. If the answer moves a lot, that is the honest signal about how much weight the number deserves.
This planner may contain errors
It is a personal project, not commercial software. It has been tested, and the methodology is published, but it has not been audited or independently verified. Check anything that matters against another source before acting on it.
It expresses no view on any product or provider
The planner does not name, compare, rate or recommend any pension provider, product, platform, fund, annuity or adviser, and it never will. Where it models an annuity it uses an illustrative cost, not a real quotation — get an actual quote from a broker or provider before assuming any figure here is achievable.
Final salary and other safeguarded pensions
This planner cannot help you decide whether to transfer or give up a final salary (defined benefit) pension, and it must not be used for that. It treats such a pension purely as an income that arrives, and takes no view at all on whether keeping it or transferring it is a good idea.
Transferring out of a defined benefit scheme means giving up a guaranteed, inflation-protected income for life, and is irreversible. It is the wrong decision for most people. If the transfer value is over £30,000 you are required by law to take regulated advice from an FCA-authorised specialist before the scheme can act on it.
Where to get real help
All of these are free, independent and far better sources of guidance than this site:
- MoneyHelper — free, impartial money and pensions guidance backed by government. moneyhelper.org.uk
- Pension Wise — a free appointment with a pensions specialist, available from age 50 if you have a defined contribution pension. Book through MoneyHelper
- Check your State Pension forecast — the real figure, from the government. gov.uk/check-state-pension
- The FCA Register — check that anyone offering you financial advice is actually authorised to do so. register.fca.org.uk
- FCA ScamSmart — how to recognise a pension scam. fca.org.uk/scamsmart
You have no financial-services protections here
Because this site is not regulated, the usual safety nets do not apply to it. You cannot complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service about it, and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme does not cover it. That is a real difference from dealing with a regulated firm, and you should weigh it accordingly.
Liability
This site is provided free, as is, with no warranty that it is accurate, complete, up to date, uninterrupted or fit for any particular purpose. To the fullest extent the law allows, I accept no liability for any loss arising from your use of, or reliance on, this site or anything it produces.
Nothing in this section limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. If you are a consumer, this does not affect your statutory rights.
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Privacy
Privacy notice
Short version: your figures never leave your device, and there is nothing for anyone to collect.
The whole planner runs inside your browser. There is no server, no account, no database, and no analytics. Your pension pot, salary, savings and everything else you enter stays on your own computer. I never see it and could not retrieve it if you asked me to.
Storage on your device
This site sets no cookies. It uses your browser's local storage for two things:
- the plan you are currently working on, so it is not lost if you refresh the page or close the tab;
- up to 24 plans that you have explicitly chosen to save using the "Save plan" button.
Both stay on your device, are never transmitted, and contain no identifier for you. You can delete them at any time — use the delete buttons in "Saved plans", or clear site data in your browser.
This storage falls within the "strictly necessary" exception in Schedule A1 to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, which expressly covers maintaining a record of information you have put into a website. That is why there is no cookie banner here: there is nothing to consent to, and a banner offering you a "reject" that the tool cannot honour would be misleading.
Third parties
There are none. This page loads no fonts, scripts, images, trackers, advertising or analytics from anywhere else, so no third party learns that you visited or what you did here. The only outbound requests are ones you make yourself by clicking a link to another site.
Server logs
This site is served as static files by [hosting provider], which may keep standard server logs including IP addresses for security and operational purposes. I do not have access to those logs and do not use any analytics service. See [link to your host's privacy policy].
If you email me
If you contact me at [your email address] I will hold your message and email address for as long as it takes to reply and for a reasonable period afterwards, and I use it only to reply to you. I do not add anyone to a mailing list, and I do not share it with anyone. The lawful basis is legitimate interests — responding to someone who has chosen to contact me.
Your rights
Where I do hold personal data about you — realistically, only an email you have sent me — you have the right to ask for a copy of it, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict how it is used, and to have it provided in a portable form. Ask me and I will do it.
If you think I have handled your data badly, please tell me first so I can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
Who is responsible
[your name], [your town/county, UK]. Contact: [your email address].
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Terms
Terms of use
The rules for using this site. By using it, you accept them.
Who runs this site
This site is run by [your name], a private individual in the UK, as a free personal project. It is not a business, it carries no advertising or sponsorship, it earns nothing, and it is not connected to any pension provider, adviser or financial firm.
What you may do with it
Use it for your own personal, non-commercial purposes as much as you like. You may save and export your own results and share them with your own adviser. You may link to this site freely.
What you may not do
- Present its output as regulated advice, or as your own professional advice to someone else.
- Use it to provide a service to clients, whether or not you charge for it.
- Copy or republish the site itself, or substantial parts of it, without permission.
- Attempt to interfere with it, or use automated means to hammer it.
- Remove or obscure any of the warnings or explanatory text when sharing output from it.
Availability
This is a free personal project. It may change, break, or disappear at any time, without notice. Do not build anything important on the assumption that it will still be here, and keep your own copies of anything you need.
Links to other sites
Where this site links elsewhere, that is for information only. I do not control those sites, do not endorse them, and am not responsible for their content or accuracy. A link is not a recommendation.
Advice, liability and your rights
The full position on advice, accuracy and liability is set out on the page, which forms part of these terms and which you should read.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in your own courts.
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Accessibility
Accessibility statement
This planner is mostly used by people in their fifties, sixties and beyond. Being usable matters more here than on most sites.
What I have aimed for
The target is WCAG 2.2 level AA. I am not claiming full conformance, because this has not been independently audited — I am telling you what has actually been done.
- Every input has a real, visible label.
- The whole planner works from the keyboard, and focus is always visible.
- Results are never conveyed by colour alone — every coloured indicator also has words.
- The layout reflows down to a phone screen and survives zooming to 200%.
- Your figures are saved as you type, so nothing is lost if you get interrupted.
- Plain English throughout, with jargon explained where it cannot be avoided.
Where I know it falls short
- The year-by-year chart is visual. Everything in it is also available as a table, which screen readers can read, but the chart itself has no full text alternative.
- The full-width table is wide and scrolls sideways, which is awkward on a small screen and with magnification.
- It has not been tested with every screen reader.
Tell me if something does not work
If any part of this is hard to use, please email [your email address] and describe what happened. I would rather fix it than not know. I am one person doing this in my own time, so I cannot promise a timescale, but I will read every message.
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Pension news
What's changed lately
Official announcements about pensions, tax and retirement, gathered from government sources once a day.
These are links to announcements published by government departments, regulators and Parliament. They are listed because they are relevant to pensions, not because they are recommended. Nothing here is financial advice. Be wary of anything you read elsewhere promising a guaranteed return, a "free pension review" or a bonus for transferring — check FCA ScamSmart first.
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Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0. Each item names the department or body that published it. Links open the publisher's own page.