Frequently Asked Questions

Annual Expenses

Enter how much you spend per year in retirement. Include all regular costs — housing, food, healthcare, travel, insurance. If unsure, start with your current spending and adjust. Tip: check our AI Budget Analysis prompt template for a quick breakdown using ChatGPT or Claude.

Currency

Choose your home currency. Inflation rates and portfolio returns are automatically sourced for that country.

Retirement Year

The year you plan to stop working. If you're already retired, select this year.

Years to Cover

How many years of retirement to model. 30 years is a common starting point for someone retiring around 60–65.

Current Savings and Assets

The total lump sum you'll have available at retirement — savings accounts, investment portfolios, and any other liquid assets you plan to draw from. Don't include property or pension here unless you intend to convert them to cash before retirement.

Inflation

Toggle on to have expenses grow each year. The calculator uses historical CPI data for your selected country. Choose between a geometric-mean average or higher percentiles (75th / 90th) to stress-test against elevated inflation. You can also enter a manual rate.

Savings Growth (Investment Portfolio)

How your savings grow each year while they're invested. Pick a risk profile that matches your allocation:

• Cash — savings account rates
• Conservative — 75% bonds, 25% equities
• Balanced — 60% equities, 40% bonds
• Aggressive — 75% equities, 25% bonds

Returns are geometric means of long-term historical data. The Monte Carlo section below will show you the impact of year-to-year volatility on these returns.

Total Nominal Withdrawals

The nominal sum of every yearly expense across your retirement, with inflation applied if enabled. This is not the capital you need today — it's the gross cashflow you'll draw over time. Compare your projected savings against this figure to see whether you can cover the full retirement period.

Savings Last

How many years your current savings can fund, factoring in investment returns. If it exceeds the period you set, you'll see a surplus.

Shortfall / Surplus

Shortfall A shortfall (red) means your savings run out before the end of the plan. Surplus A surplus (green) means you have money left over after covering all projected expenses.

Inflation Adjustment

If inflation is enabled, the info bar shows how your expenses grow from today's value to their inflation-adjusted value at the retirement year. This affects Total Nominal Withdrawals and all yearly figures.

Yearly Breakdown

Expand to see each year's expense, monthly equivalent, running total, and remaining savings. If investment growth is active, an additional column shows the return earned that year.

Savings Depletion

Once remaining savings hit zero, the row is highlighted. From that year onward, expenses are no longer covered by your pot.

Instead of assuming the same return every year, the simulator draws a random return for each year from a distribution based on your selected portfolio's historical mean and volatility. It does this 1,000 times, producing 1,000 different possible futures for your savings.

Why it matters

A fixed 7% return every year looks great on paper. But if the market drops 30% in year one and recovers later, you've already withdrawn from a smaller balance — and your savings may never recover. By running thousands of randomized paths, Monte Carlo shows you the probability of success, not just one optimistic line.

Success Rate

The percentage of simulations where your savings lasted the full period. Above 85% is generally considered comfortable; below 70% suggests you may need to adjust spending, save more, or delay retirement.

Percentile Bands Chart

The fan chart shows how your savings evolve over time across all simulations:

• Light band (P10–P90): 80% of outcomes fall in this range.
• Dark band (P25–P75): the middle 50% — a more "likely" corridor.
• Blue line (P50): the median outcome — half above, half below.

Hover over the chart to see exact values at each year.

End-of-Period Outcomes

A snapshot of how much you'd have left at the end of the plan under five scenarios (P10 through P90). If even the pessimistic scenario shows a positive balance, your plan is robust.

The wealth plan gives you a year-by-year forward projection of your income, expenses, assets, and net worth — from today through retirement and beyond. Fill in the setup form, generate the plan, then fine-tune individual cells in the table.

Getting Started

Choose your currency, set the plan start year, retirement year, and how many years to project. Enter your current income, living costs, and savings. The tool will generate a full table you can scroll through.

Inflation & Portfolio Returns

Enable inflation to have expenses grow each year based on historical CPI data for your currency's country. Select a portfolio risk profile to model investment growth — returns are drawn from long-run historical averages.

Pension Setup

Enter state, employment, and private pension details. The tool supports annuities (lifetime or fixed-term) and lump-sum payouts. Pension income appears automatically in the correct year.

Editing Individual Cells

Click any non-total cell in the table to override a value. Overrides are highlighted and persist across recalculations. Right-click a cell to clear its override.

Clearing Overrides

Use the "Clear Overrides" button to remove all manual edits and regenerate the plan purely from setup data.

Income Section

Shows earned income (pre-retirement), state pension, employment pension, private pension, and investment income. "Portfolio Return (Reinvested)" is a memo row — it shows growth that stays in the investment portfolio rather than being paid out as income.

Expenses Section

Covers living costs, housing, pension contributions (pre-retirement), tax liability, and other expenses. Pension contributions stop at retirement. Tax rate switches from pre- to post-retirement rate.

Income / Expense Surplus

The difference between total income and total expenses. A positive value means you're saving; negative means you're drawing from assets.

Assets & Net Worth

Tracks liquidity, investment portfolio, accumulated pension pots, and property. Net worth equals total assets minus total liabilities (mortgage). When surplus is negative, liquidity is drawn down first; if liquidity hits zero, the investment portfolio covers the remaining gap.

After generating a plan, scroll down to the Monte Carlo section. It runs hundreds or thousands of randomized simulations to show the probability that your savings last through retirement. Unlike the base plan (which uses a fixed return), Monte Carlo captures year-to-year volatility and sequence-of-returns risk.

A success rate above 85% is generally considered comfortable. Below 70%, consider adjusting spending, increasing savings, or delaying retirement.