Why I Built This

It Started With a Simple Question

Like most people approaching retirement, I found myself staring at pension statements wondering: "Will this be enough?" It seemed like a straightforward question, but finding a reliable answer proved surprisingly difficult.

I turned to the internet. There were dozens of pension calculators available — from major banks, financial websites, and government portals. After trying several, I realised they all shared the same fundamental limitation: they were dangerously oversimplified.

The Joint Planning Gap

The first real problem came when I realised the calculators completely ignored my wife's pension. We'd planned to retire together, share expenses, and optimise our combined tax position — yet every calculator treated us as separate financial entities.

When I manually tried to factor in both pensions, I discovered something important: by carefully coordinating withdrawals, we could significantly reduce our overall tax bill. Different ages meant different pension access dates, and smart allocation of income between us could keep both of us in lower tax brackets.

The Tax-Free Allowance Complexity

Then came the realisation about the 25% tax-free allowance. This wasn't just "free money" — it was a strategic tool that could dramatically affect our entire retirement plan. The 2024 lifetime lump sum allowance cap of £268,275 added another layer of complexity that none of the calculators handled properly.

How much should we take tax-free and when? Should we accelerate it early? None of the online tools could model this properly.

State Pension Timing

State pension age is 67 for most people now, but private pensions can be accessed from 55 (rising to 57 from 2028). This creates a bridging period where you rely entirely on private savings. We needed higher withdrawals during those years, then could reduce them once state pension started.

The strategic implications were significant. If markets performed poorly in those early bridging years, the pot could be substantially depleted before state benefits began — a risk no basic calculator modelled.

The Monte Carlo Moment

The final piece was realising that using average returns was fundamentally misleading. Markets don't deliver steady 5% returns year after year. The sequence of returns matters enormously — bad returns early in retirement cause permanent damage that average returns never recover.

I needed Monte Carlo simulation: thousands of scenarios with different market outcomes to understand the real range of possibilities. Not "your pension lasts 28 years" but "your pension lasts to 90 in 78% of simulated scenarios."

Building Something Better

After months of frustration with existing tools, I built what I needed. The result is this calculator — free, comprehensive, and honest about uncertainty.

Try It

It's free. No account required. Enter your details and within a minute you'll have 1,000 Monte Carlo simulations, year-by-year tax breakdowns, and a clear picture of how long your pension is likely to last.