(Flexible/Individualised) Retirement Income Planning Tool 3 January at 4:52PM in Pensions, annuities & retirement planning 25 replies 1.3K views

sponge242

Hi folks,

I've recently come across this fine forum and enjoyed perusing many of the posts.  I think I will ask 2 or 3 more questions for helpful views in due course and post separately, but I wondered if anyone here can help with regard to pointing me to a retirement planning tool.  More specifically, while I have created my own Excel spreadsheet which shows specific annual income/drawdown for my/my OH, from assumed retirement age, I am looking for a tool online that allows the user to input separate amounts per year.  All I have found with the online calculators, is that I have to state what I want to drawdown/achieve annually, rather than year by year.  This is important for me, as like some people I have read about in the forum, I will need to take more from DC drawdown when I retire (3 years time), until DB pension kicks in (5 years time), and then until SP kicks in (10 years time).

Hope that makes sense, hopefully there is something that I can access and I shall be very appreciative of any recommendations.  Thanks.

Albermarle

UK retirement planning tools — MoneySavingExpert Forum

Similar question asked on this thread.

NedS

Try Timeline (timeline.co). It's professional software but you can set up a demo account with up to 3 client (one should be enough for you, but you could set up another 2 with different scenarios).

The system allows you to model multiple DC pensions(including defining your asset allocations)/ISAs/cash holdings and defined income streams (DBs + SP plus anything else), starting at different time points for both yourself and a partner. You can set up desired income for different time periods, and add in one off spends you are likely to need (new car, expensive anniversaries etc), and the whole caboodle can me modelled against historical stock market data or monte carlo simulations.

You set your desired income levels and the system tells you the percentage success (or failure) rate. Tweak the settings and instantly see the results.

sponge242

Hi folks - many thanks for the quick and helpful responses.  And apologies I never noticed the other post...thanks again for linking me to that.  Really helpful detailed comment from NedS - really appreciate that.

I've spent a while tonight getting to grips with Timeline and it's really decent, albeit I still am slightly unsure about the figures (they seem quite optimistic, even though I have a 'pessimistic' outlook 'ticked').  It does the job though, I think, of aiding some confidence in my own Excel spreadsheet calculations.  Thanks again.  

Pat38493

sponge242 said:

Hi folks - many thanks for the quick and helpful responses.  And apologies I never noticed the other post...thanks again for linking me to that.  Really helpful detailed comment from NedS - really appreciate that.

I've spent a while tonight getting to grips with Timeline and it's really decent, albeit I still am slightly unsure about the figures (they seem quite optimistic, even though I have a 'pessimistic' outlook 'ticked').  It does the job though, I think, of aiding some confidence in my own Excel spreadsheet calculations.  Thanks again.  

One thing to be careful of with Timeline is that if you are entering. DB pension which will be paid out in 5 years from now, Timeline always seems to expect you to enter everything in todays real terms.  If you have a pension estimate from your DB pension admin, you need to be clear whether they have already increased the estimate for forecast future inflation - if so you would need to revert it back to real terms because timeline will re-inflate it again from the value you put in behind the scenes.

NedS

One thing I haven't figured out yet with Timeline is how to tell it to prioritise which source spending will come from. In the cashflow screen it shows withdraws spread proportionally based on the size of the pots. During the early bridging years I have large withdraws coming from my own relatively large SIPP account incurring income tax whilst my partners SIPP is hardly being drawn upon and they are not fully utilising their tax allowance and we have a cash account uninvested again hardly drawn upon, so from a tax perspective it's far from ideal. I did find an option to tell it to withdraw from bonds first over equities within an individual SIPP account, for example, but no option to prioritise one account over another, or optimise for tax free allowances. But generally I have found it useful for modelling our scenario of early retirement, funding a bridging period from multiple sources, and with multiple DB pensions all kicking in at different ages. For that purpose, I feel it is able to give me the confidence to determine if I have enough and can pull the plug on work. Next up I intend to use it to model the two scenarios if either of us were to die early, and how the survivor may fair (e.g, what levels of income they could reasonably expect with a high degree of certainty given the loss of one SP and 50% of spousal DB pensions).

NoMore

@NedS

Is it not in Plan Settings - Account Withdrawal order ? It gives me the option but I'm single so not sure what happens when planning for a couple.

NedS

NoMore said:

@NedS

Is it not in Plan Settings - Account Withdrawal order ? It gives me the option but I'm single so not sure what happens when planning for a couple.

Yes, it could well be, but I haven't figured out how to change it. Mine is set to: Deduct 1st evenly

Note: Deductions at the same level will be deducted evenly in proportion to their size

and I don't see where to change that. I probably just need to delve deeper into the options.

NoMore

Its drag and drop, grab the account you want to move. The deducted evenly means when they are on the same level, if you have a higher account in the order it will take from there first.

Its just the default is them on all the same level.

NedS

NoMore said:

Its drag and drop, grab the account you want to move. The deducted evenly means when they are on the same level, if you have a higher account in the order it will take from there first.

Its just the default is them on all the same level.

Got it - thanks. I didn't realise you can drag accounts vertically as well as horizontally, so now I'm good

Qyburn

I had a quick play with Timeline. I seems you can only deal with full years, so for example no way to configure a pension starting October, and another starting May the next year.  Have I missed something?  Also, are the years calendar years, or tax years?
Thanks