Have I enough to retire at age x calculator

There have been a number posts recently along the lines of have I enough to retire at age x. Its a topic I'm interested in myself.

I started a basic spreadsheet with my pension pots/Savings/expected spending/life expectancy etc to try and work this out but quickly realized it wasn't fit for purpose as I wasn't taking things like inflation/ARF growth etc. into account

I started looking around for online calculators that would do this for me. Irish Life have one on pensionplanet but its quite basic and only makes projections based on annuities not ARFs.

I found two that are free and easy to use and provide impressive results in an easy to understand format. (disclaimer I have no affiliation to either but thought they might be helpful for others planning or in retirement). I would be interested to hear peoples experiences of them.

Guiide - Pensions made simple

No advice costs, no fees, just the tools you need to get what you want in retirement.

www.guiide.co.uk

- Very intuitive and easy to use user interface
- Asks you information on :
- Desired retirement date
- Wants - desired after tax income, whether you want 25% tax free lump sum, include inflation
- Haves - Your pension posts, savings, other cash, DB pension or other income,
- Life - Simple question on your health to determine life expectancy
- Design - Expected return on pension/savings pots depending on risk you are willing to take. Default is 3.5%

It then runs a calculation to estimate if you can retire at your desired retirement date based on the data you input or whether your money would be expected to run out based on certain assumptions which are also documented on the site.

Even better it will run simulations if things don't go as expected, (lower gains than expected, you live 3 years longer than expected, 20% market crash at retirement, you need additional care for your last 2 years (40k a year) and will give you a prediction for each scenario and what to do if you will run out. Either take less income or save more.

I found it quite excellent.

Some caveats.
- its a UK site so currency is sterling. I just entered euro amounts rather than doing currency conversion.
- It makes estimates based on UK the tax system . Not perfect but I understand UK system is broadly similar to Irish tax system . Something to bear in mind.
- It automatically adds the UK state pension (which seems roughly similar in value to the Irish one so not a big issue for me)
- It doesn't cater for couples joint pensions though the creators say this is in the pipeline, They need to be modelled separately for the moment.
- Its obviously only intended as a guide . Any number of things could affect the modelling and predicted outcome but thats all covered in the sites model assumptions tab which is worth reading as it also covers UK tax considerations.

There's probably some more gotchas in there. The site makes its money from users opting to click on affiliate links at the end but these are quite unobtrusive and don't distract from the overall experience.

cFIREsim

cfiresim.com

The user interface here is not as pretty as guiide but its pretty powerful nonetheless and provides lots of options for running simulations.
You essentially enter your expected retirement date, portfolio value and spending plan (can be fixed income or % of ARF). You can also add additional income /spending as once off or recurring (referred to as adjustments on the site).

It takes a different approach than guiide so that instead of looking forward, it runs simulations over the last 115 years to determine how many times you would have run out of money after retirement if you had retired in any of those years from 1907 to 2021

I found this very useful. Its a US site so currency is in dollars but again I ignored this and just entered euro values.
Worth noting the desired income entered is gross of tax so the simulations are not dependent on any US tax calculations.

These calculators may help people in retirement planning. They certainly helped me.

Hi Guiide is actually my site. I noticed people visiting it from here. It is UK based but hope you find it helpful. Thanks for the write up.

KevinH said:

Hi Guiide is actually my site. I noticed people visiting it from here. It is UK based but hope you find it helpful. Thanks for the write up.

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I'll certainly have a look as I think this type of analysis is well worth the effort to gain understanding of what you have and what you need in retirement, before anyone approaches the " main players" . Well done

KevinH said:

Hi Guiide is actually my site. I noticed people visiting it from here. It is UK based but hope you find it helpful. Thanks for the write up.

Click to expand...

Nice job!

As others have said, the rules are largely the same in both countries, so your tool works well for us too. The only real constraint I can see with it is the 55 starting age limit, whereas we can access our pots from 50. If you ever think about allowing the user to specify more variables, this one would be particularly helpful for your new Irish fanbase.

Excellent tool - I have been searching for something like this but didn’t expect to come across one so comprehensive.

Thanks!

Thanks all for the comments, we are actually discussing with an Irish employer to do a tailored version for them. If so, we will need to change some of the variables to be specific to Ireland and can look at making an Irish version widely available.