Cashflow model for retirement planning

El_Torro

I stumbled across a Youtube video, the creator has made a relatively simple tool for seeing when you can retire to ensure that you don't run out of money before you die. I don't follow the video creator and can't really speak about the quality of his videos, I did think his tool is of interest though and thought it would be interesting to get other people's thoughts.

The link to the Cashflow calculator is in this video: https://youtu.be/KUg_u99k8ww

You don't need to watch the video, nor the instructions in the link shown in the Excel file. I found the tool pretty intuitive. 

What I found interesting when inputting my own details in the tool is that it looks like I can actually retire surprisingly soon. Just one snag: I would need to spend all my cash and all the money in my ISAs to fund my retirement, and this still wouldn't get me to age 55. So even though the tool thinks I can retire soon I'll actually be more or less destitute a few years before I can access my pensions. Just goes to show that tools like this are not bullet proof and the person using the tool does need to understand their own situation when using it. 

Anyway, would be good to get your thoughts on this tool. Like I say it seems simple, user friendly and the messages given are pretty clear (with some limitations). 


As with any tool like this it makes a lot of assumptions about your expenditure, future inflation and future investment growth. 


Also, I can't seem to figure out how to link to Youtube without embedding the video in this post. Just open the video in Youtube and you'll be able to see the link to the Excel file. It didn't feel right to just link the Excel file directly myself.