Looking for a good pension calculator

snarffie

squirrelpie said:

Thanks to everybody who responded to my post

As I said, unusable!

‘Unusable’ is a bit of an exaggeration. The state pension calculation is explained in the small print on the website:

’ We've initially calculated your retirement age to be 67 based on when you can take your State Pension. Your retirement age is the point where you want to start taking benefits from your pension pot.

You may choose to retire at a different age, provided this is a minimum of 55 (changing to 57 from April 2028). It's important to remember that the age you start taking your pension could affect the benefits you receive. Where you select a retirement age that is greater than your normal State Pension age, we assume that you defer taking your State Pension until this selected retirement age.’

Guide is certainly a much more configurable calculator in any case.

vacheron

Smudgeismydog said:

Only observation I can add to the GUIIDE calculator, is that it defaults everything to age 55 for me.

When you first log in, click on the lower "main journey" option, there will appear 8 tabs along the top.
Click on tab 1 (You).  Make sure your date of birth is shown correctly, and then select your retirement month and year from the pull down options below. 

 My SPA is 67, so the age I can access my DC pensions is of course 57, 

If you want to access your DC pensions at 57, just put your retirement date as 57, it will automatically add your state pension (adjusted for inflation) from age 67

and I seem to be unable to show my existing dependents pension is already in payment (again, it will only let me use a commencement date age of 55).

best thing to do is add this as an additional final salary pension in tab 4 (Haves) You will have to live with it commencing when you are 55 (as it is your details in the calculator), but you can ask for it to increase in line with inflation too, or by a fixed amount per year. 

My wife won't get her state pension until 9 years after I do, so I just added this as a final salary pension which I had to (very approximately) adjust for inflation, and which then commenced when I was 76 . 

squirrelpie

snarffie said:

squirrelpie said:

Thanks to everybody who responded to my post

As I said, unusable!

‘Unusable’ is a bit of an exaggeration. The state pension calculation is explained in the small print on the website:

’ We've initially calculated your retirement age to be 67 based on when you can take your State Pension. Your retirement age is the point where you want to start taking benefits from your pension pot.

You may choose to retire at a different age, provided this is a minimum of 55 (changing to 57 from April 2028). It's important to remember that the age you start taking your pension could affect the benefits you receive. Where you select a retirement age that is greater than your normal State Pension age, we assume that you defer taking your State Pension until this selected retirement age.’

Guide is certainly a much more configurable calculator in any case.

Sorry, but where does it say that? What I see is "We can include the flat-rate state pension in your summary. This is based on a weekly figure of £230.25" And then it uses £16,123 instead (i.e. £310ish). It seems to be confused about how old I am today and when today is.

I don't think unusable is any exaggaration at all. I'm speaking for me; it may be usable for you; I have no way of knowing.

sofm

 My SPA is 67, so the age I can access my DC pensions is of course 57,

Minor point - my SPA is 67, but my NMPA is 55 (actually I have two as was born in April 1971)

snarffie

squirrelpie said:

snarffie said:

squirrelpie said:

Thanks to everybody who responded to my post

As I said, unusable!

‘Unusable’ is a bit of an exaggeration. The state pension calculation is explained in the small print on the website:

’ We've initially calculated your retirement age to be 67 based on when you can take your State Pension. Your retirement age is the point where you want to start taking benefits from your pension pot.

You may choose to retire at a different age, provided this is a minimum of 55 (changing to 57 from April 2028). It's important to remember that the age you start taking your pension could affect the benefits you receive. Where you select a retirement age that is greater than your normal State Pension age, we assume that you defer taking your State Pension until this selected retirement age.’

Guide is certainly a much more configurable calculator in any case.

Sorry, but where does it say that? What I see is "We can include the flat-rate state pension in your summary. This is based on a weekly figure of £230.25" And then it uses £16,123 instead (i.e. £310ish). It seems to be confused about how old I am today and when today is.

I don't think unusable is any exaggaration at all. I'm speaking for me; it may be usable for you; I have no way of knowing.

It’s on the results page, just under the results!

’ Learn more about our assumptions: your retirement age, monthly contributions, estimated growth, target retirement income and tax-free lump sum.’

You just need to read it all 😜
no matter, it’s clearly  ‘unusable’ 😂

handful

I also use Guiide but due to that not being able to handle a couple (I believe that may have changed now) I also use Evolvemyretirement which is also very good. There are some small charges associated with it but it is really good and also uses the Monte Carlo modelling.

FIREDreamer

Struggling with guiide. I used it in tne past for a start date of retirememt of Sept 2023.

Now it still uses Sept 2023 as the start date. How do i change the start / retirement date as it has one extra year before state pension age in tne projections as a result.

How do i change this date?

vacheron

FIREDreamer said:

Struggling with guiide. I used it in tne past for a start date of retirememt of Sept 2023.

Now it still uses Sept 2023 as the start date. How do i change the start / retirement date as it has one extra year before state pension age in tne projections as a result.

How do i change this date?

I responded to a similar query for someone else above:

When you first log in, click on the lower "main journey" option, there will appear 8 tabs along the top.
Click on tab 1 (You).  Make sure your date of birth is shown correctly, and then select your retirement month and year from the pull down options below. 

FIREDreamer

vacheron said:

FIREDreamer said:

Struggling with guiide. I used it in tne past for a start date of retirememt of Sept 2023.

Now it still uses Sept 2023 as the start date. How do i change the start / retirement date as it has one extra year before state pension age in tne projections as a result.

How do i change this date?

I responded to a similar query for someone else above:

When you first log in, click on the lower "main journey" option, there will appear 8 tabs along the top.
Click on tab 1 (You).  Make sure your date of birth is shown correctly, and then select your retirement month and year from the pull down options below. 

I dont seem to have this.

Then it has 2023/24 in year 1 which is out of date. This cannot be set to zero as it has a minimum value that can be selected of £7,200 for some reason. This year shouldnt be there now in 2025 anyway.

The final salary pensions are correct as at 2025 as shown. The current inputted DC is £370,000 with no future contributions but is stated as £370,913 as at September 2023 (see screenshot in previous post) which was 1.5 years ago.

vacheron

Interesting. this is my first page: 






It mentions you have "started accessing benefits", have you actually started accessing benefits, or does the site just think you have for some reason?