Balanced default — still below the long-run historical range supported by the Barclays Equity Gilt Study (UK equities ~5% real) and global equity estimates, leaving room for fees and a mix of assets. The Conservative button sets 4.5%, Aggressive 8.0%

Within the range supported by Barclays long-run UK gilt/cash real returns (~0.6%–1.4%)

Balanced default, set to match the DC Growth Pot — just below the Barclays 50/50 equity/gilt blend long-run average (~3.1% real)

Broadly tracking inflation — compare against current best-buy cash ISA rates

Close to Barclays' 124-year UK cash real return (~0.6%), slightly below given current savings rates

Conservative default — house prices tracking general inflation; adjust on Page 1 if a real uplift (or decline) is expected

The growth rate sliders themselves are the exception: they take a nominal input, which the model deflates internally — see the Return & Growth Assumptions above for each default's real-terms equivalent

Tests every 1% H/W split from 0% to 100%

Primary goal — meet income target

Tiebreaker when income target met

Final tiebreaker to balance depletion

Up to LSA cap of £268,275 (or up to full pot). Each regular ad-hoc withdrawal is blended 25% tax-free / 75% taxable in this way — the mechanism providers call UFPLS (Uncrystallised Funds Pension Lump Sum) — rather than a single upfront crystallisation event.

Replaced the old £1,073,100 Lifetime Allowance, abolished April 2024. DB TFLS is deducted first; the remainder is available for DC PCLS — see LSA Summary above.

Added to DB, SP and other income before tax

Fills basic-rate band in early years; surplus to ISA

Capped by remaining LSA and pot size, same logic as the regular drawdown's PCLS

No further tax-free entitlement on it, so there's no benefit to leaving it untouched — the regular pot is left alone for as long as possible instead

Funded from Growth Pot first, then Defensive Pot, when the event fires

Age and amount set on Page 1; amount of 0 skips entirely

Crystallisation status makes no difference post-2027 — both included identically in the estate

The standard market approach; can be switched off to annuitise the full amount for a higher but fully taxable income

4.3% at 55 rising to 15.0% at 85, reflecting broad UK market levels as of June 2026 — not a quote. Always get personalised advice and compare actual provider rates before purchasing.

Up to −15% at 100% survivor continuation; escalation multipliers ≈ ×0.625 (RPI/CPI-linked), ×0.70–0.75 (CPI capped 5%/2.5%), ×0.72 (fixed 3%) relative to a level annuity

A directly-nominated joint life, unlike DB occupational schemes — applies regardless of household type, including Unmarried Couple

Already-purchased annuities should be entered as DB income instead — this section is for modelling a future decision

The key difference from crystallising — converted into a right to income, not a transferable asset, so it's excluded from the IHT calculation either way, confirmed against the April 2027 rules

Not from model year 0

Paid to surviving spouse on first death

Currently the full new state pension rate (2026/27: £241.30/wk)

Conservative assumption for long-run modelling

Cash savings drawn first (its interest is taxable), then Premium Bonds and Cash ISA by lowest expected return, then the Non-ISA Stocks & Shares holding, with S&S ISA pinned last. All drawn before pensions under Traditional Drawdown, the default method.

Refilled from Growth Pot; used after cash. Runs for the whole plan unless you set an end age.

Refills Defensive Pot; subject to investment returns

Entered as net value after CGT/BADR. Grows at a user-set rate. On reaching the sale age, full proceeds convert to the cash pool in one year. Included in the IHT estate until sold. Does not participate in the drawdown hierarchy — it is a passive asset until the sale event triggers.

Grows at the user-set prize rate (default 4.35% — NS&I stated rate from the September 2026 draw; a typical £50,000 holding gets about 3.8% in a year and about 4.0% on average over 20 years; smaller holdings get less), prizes reinvested. Drawn after cash (its interest is taxable, so spending it first is worth more than its headline rate), then ranked against the Cash ISA by lowest expected return. Included in the IHT estate, capped at the NS&I limit — £50,000 per person, not index-linked, adjustable on Page 1 — with any excess paid into cash. Bonds are not inherited: on death a holder's bonds are cashed in rather than passing to the survivor.

Stop at each person's own retirement age: Future DC Contributions (into the DC Growth Pot) · Future Cash Savings (into the cash pool).
Run for as long as their window says, retired or not: Future ISA Contributions (Cash and S&S) and Future Non-ISA Contributions, all moved from cash savings into the respective wrapper. Leave the duration blank to run to the end of the plan — usually right, since paying into an ISA in retirement is still worth doing.
Three of the four — ISA, Non-ISA and cash savings — accept a From/For window to start or stop mid-plan. DC contributions have no window: they run from year one to retirement and can't be started or stopped part-way. All four end at that person's death: a contribution moves one person's own money into their own wrapper, so it is never redirected to the survivor.

Before retirement the model assumes employment income covers spending. Starting the target at the FIRST retirement would abandon that assumption while the second person still earns a salary the model doesn't represent — demanding the full household target from the portfolio, funded by whichever pot is accessible. Switch to the first retirement age on the Income Targets section if the earlier retiree was the main earner.

Every projection step is a full year, anchored to Person 1's age — Person 2's events sit at the fixed age gap between them. There's no part-year proration: retiring in April rather than December lands in the same projection year. Entering a date of birth sets Person 1's current age exactly and re-derives it every time the file is opened, so a scenario saved a year ago comes back correctly advanced rather than frozen. Person 2's age is not read off their own date of birth — it's Person 1's age plus the whole-year gap between the two dates, so between the two birthdays Person 2's age can read a year above their literal age. This keeps the gap fixed, so Person 2's State Pension and DB start never move with when the file was opened. Date of birth is an input aid only — nothing else reads it, and a scenario saved with an age but no date of birth behaves exactly as before. For anything that genuinely turns on a mid-year date, such as a final part-year of salary, model it as a one-off income in the relevant year rather than as a retirement month.

The savings ladder. Cash first (the only pot whose interest is taxable, so spending it first is worth more than its headline rate), then Premium Bonds and Cash ISA ranked by lowest expected return from your own growth assumptions, then Non-ISA Stocks & Shares, then Stocks & Shares ISA last. The bottom two are pinned regardless of ranking — same expected return, but Non-ISA is taxed on its income and gains where the ISA isn't, so pinning the pair at the bottom means a cautious equity assumption can never make the model sell your investments first. Ranking is fixed once at the start of a projection from your assumption sliders, never re-derived from year-to-year simulated returns.

Three methods, chosen on the Combined page (configured on Page 1's Pension Drawdown & Inheritance Settings).
Traditional Drawdown (default): DB/State Pension funds the target first; any gap is met from the savings ladder, then the DC pension (Defensive → Growth, optimised) as a last resort.
Pension First Drawdown: DC pension runs first, then the savings ladder picks up the rest — preserving savings for beneficiaries, since unused pensions join the IHT estate from April 2027. Suits larger estates with pension wealth surplus to lifetime needs.
Pension First with ISA Recycling: as above, plus a second stage — further DC pension is drawn into whatever tax-band space the first stage left unused, and the surplus is paid into the Stocks & Shares ISA rather than spent, moving money out of the taxed pension without raising what you live on.

Each method has its own Drawdown Tax Band Limit — the tax band the DC draw may reach (Personal Allowance, Basic, Higher or Additional), or Automatic, which uses your beneficiary tax band. Traditional also offers None, leaving the order above untouched; any other band makes its own DC block run before the ladder, the same mechanism Pension First uses.
The limit is a tax preference, not a spending limit: your income target and Cash Reserve come first. Once savings above the Cash Reserve are used up, DC pension is drawn above the limit (paying more tax) to keep income on target, before the Reserve is touched.
The Cash Reserve floor is soft: breached rather than leaving income unmet, down the same ladder in the same order. Wherever the model displays the drawdown order for a specific calculation (e.g. Page 8's reasoning panel), it reflects whichever method is actually selected, not a fixed default.

The two protect against different things, which is why they are sized and set differently.

The Cash Reserve is a flat amount in today’s money. Set a figure and the model holds that much purchasing power back from drawdown for the whole plan — it doesn't grow, shrink or step down with your income target. It covers cash, Premium Bonds and the Cash ISA together; the Stocks & Shares ISA sits outside it. You can also set a minimum bank-cash floor within it, so a bill never forces an ISA sale. A flat amount is deliberate: sizing a reserve in years gives it no fixed value — it shrinks as the income target steps down and empties out near the assumed death age, which is not what an emergency reserve is for. A reserve that shrinks is not a reserve.

The DC Defensive Pot is sized in years, because it represents lower-risk pension holdings, and a bond or gilt can't mature after the plan ends. It's genuinely forward-looking — each look-ahead year’s real need (income target with phase step-downs, plus any care or one-off costs landing that year) is summed, not one year's figure multiplied. It can also be set as a direct £ amount, converted back to the equivalent fractional years — useful if you hold a defensive allocation of known size. The £ figure shown is the FIRST drawing year’s target, labelled at first draw, since a declining schedule costs less each year as DB and State Pension come into payment; it is not a fixed holding. A ladder sized to each year’s own (typically shrinking) need covers more calendar years than that conversion implies, since it divides by the largest (first retirement year’s) draw — the model’s figure is the conservative one.

How long the programme runs is a separate setting from how much it holds. The years slider sets the size; Programme runs from / to ages set how long it's maintained, shown under that person’s own name. Leave them blank and it behaves as always — building once retirement is within the window, rebuilt every year to plan end. Set an end age and the window shortens by a year each year instead of switching off, so the holding winds down and each maturing slice returns to the Growth Pot — what a real bond or gilt ladder does. A start age delays the programme, e.g. if the holding hasn't been bought yet.

Both exclude gifting (discretionary, not a must-cover need) and the survivor income step-down — neither shrinks just because one of you has died, since you don't know in advance how long the survivor will live. Three things draw on the reserve and they aren't treated alike. A gift is hard: it may draw reserve-eligible pots only down to the reserve — what it cannot take from them it takes from outside the reserve instead, Non-ISA first then the Stocks & Shares ISA, and is trimmed only once those are exhausted too (a gift you choose to pay from the pension never touches the reserve — see Gifts paid from the pension) — so raising the reserve usually changes which pot a gift comes out of rather than whether it happens, and pushing a gift from cash into a growth pot costs the growth-rate difference for the rest of the projection, often more than the reserve does to income drawdown. ISA and Non-ISA contributions are hard too, against both the reserve and the minimum bank cash — a contribution is money you've chosen to move, not a bill, so it's capped at whatever sits above the floor. Income is soft: the reserve is a preference, breached rather than leaving you short.

Why the £ figures aren't comparable. The Cash Reserve is measured against total household spending need; the DC Defensive Pot against the DC draw only — the need remaining after DB and State Pension, taken in full without regard to any drawdown cap. Where a cap means part of that need is actually funded from ISA or cash, the Defensive Pot is still sized on the whole of it and so is larger than the pension draw it protects. Whether that's the right basis is a live question — sizing on the pension slice alone would assume the ISA and cash used instead are themselves defensive, which on an equity ISA they aren't. On a plan with substantial guaranteed income, the same number of years implies a much smaller £ figure on the Defensive Pot than on the Reserve.

Where cash returns sit below inflation, a flat real reserve drifts below the figure you set even in years nothing is drawn from it — the panel flags this when your own assumptions imply it.

Beyond the DC Defensive Pot window, no buffer is held at all — nothing to protect against a downturn for yet, so the full pot stays in the higher-growth Growth Pot. Once within that window, the Defensive Pot starts pre-building toward the real net income need (target income, net of anticipated DB/State Pension) for the first N years of retirement — split between each person's own pot by who is projected to draw that income (each held inside the drawdown cap, then whoever pays less tax, then by pot size) — so a crash landing exactly at retirement doesn't force selling Growth Pot assets. The same declining schedule then continues, shrinking as DB and State Pension come in and winding down to nothing by plan end, with any excess released back to Growth. Runs for the whole of retirement unless you set an end age on the DC Defensive Pot control, in which case the look-ahead window shortens by a year each year until the pot empties at that age; a start age delays the programme beginning. Models a pre-retirement de-risking glide path plus an ongoing rebalancing programme.

Each year the model checks whether your marginal tax rate is projected to be higher three years from now. If so, it draws a little extra from the DC Defensive Pot only (never the Growth Pot) to fill the rest of the current tax band, and shelters the net proceeds in the Stocks & Shares ISA. The 3-year window is fixed and not adjustable on screen. It only changes anything when a higher future rate is actually projected — on a flat-rate plan it never fires.

Tax-irrelevant — ISA income always tax-free

Frozen until April 2031 (fiscal drag), then CPI-indexed

Frozen until April 2031, then CPI-indexed

60% effective rate from £100k–£125,140

Applied per person annually

Confirmed in the Autumn Budget 2025 — a +2 point rise on savings income specifically (pension/earned income rates are unaffected). The plan starts within the 2026/27 tax year, so today's 20%/40%/45% rates still apply to year 1; the higher rates apply from year 2 onward.

Runs before DC optimiser — improves marginal rates

Only interest is taxable via PSA

Spent by four mechanisms, each against that person’s OWN £20,000: (1) the explicit annual ISA contribution (start year/duration, Page 1); (2) surplus DB/State income above the lifestyle target; (3) Stage B recycling of pension drawn into unused tax-band space; and (4) Bed & ISA transfers out of the Non-ISA pot, which run twice — once into your own allowance, then once into your spouse’s unused room. Each reduces the room left for the ones after it in the same year, so they never double up. There is no cross-person spillover: if one person’s £20,000 is used up, their share is not redirected into the other’s.

The allowance itself. £20,000 per person per year, cash taking first claim and stocks the remainder, with the 2027 £12,000 cash sub-limit for under-65s.
Ends at death. It is the person's own allowance, not the household's, so it is not redirected to the survivor — a couple's £40,000 becomes £20,000 from the first death.
The cash has to be there. A contribution moves money you already hold, not new money. The cash half is settled first from cash savings; the stocks half takes only what is left — in a cash-short year the S&S half is scaled down, never skipped.
Two floors, and they bite differently. The Cash Reserve caps the S&S half only: a Cash ISA move leaves the reserve untouched — the Cash ISA is inside it — so in a tight year the Cash ISA gets first claim, while a Stocks & Shares ISA move draws on the reserve and is limited to whatever sits above it. The minimum kept as bank cash caps BOTH halves, since both are funded from bank cash — a contribution is money you have chosen to move, not a bill, so it is capped at that floor rather than allowed to spend through it.
ISA before Non-ISA. Where both are running, the ISA contribution takes its reserve headroom first and the Non-ISA contribution is limited to what remains.

No tax return impact

Growth. Uses the same Stocks & Shares growth rate as the ISA, as a total return: the dividend yield you set splits it rather than adding to it — at 6% growth with a 2% yield, the shares rise 4% and pay 2% out. Without this the same fund would compound faster outside a tax wrapper than inside one.

Dividends. Taxed above the £500 allowance at 10.75% / 35.75% / 39.35% depending on your band, as the top slice of your income — after your pension income and your savings interest. The allowance is a nil-rate band rather than a deduction, so it can still push the rest of the dividend into a higher rate. Reinvesting does not avoid the tax: dividends are taxed when paid, whether spent or reinvested. Reinvesting is the default; reinvested dividends raise what you have paid for the holding, so the same money is never taxed twice.

Capital gains. Charged on disposals during your lifetime, above the £3,000 annual exempt amount, at 18% within the basic-rate band and 24% above it. Gains are worked out by pooling — one running average cost across the holding, not individual purchases — so a sale realises only the growth portion. No capital gains tax is charged on death: the holding rebases to its market value, so a gain never realised in life is never taxed, and passes to the survivor at that rebased value.

Held per person. Both taxes are individual: each person has their own holding, cost, £500 dividend allowance, £3,000 exempt amount and rate band. Money drawn from the holding is taken from each person in proportion to what they hold.

When the tax is paid. Neither tax is deducted at source. Both are a self assessment bill, worked out at the end of the tax year and paid the following January, funded in the same order as everything else — cash first, then the rest of the drawdown order.

Where it sits in the drawdown order. Immediately before the Stocks & Shares ISA. Both are the same asset at the same expected return, but this one is taxed on its income every year and again when sold, so the ISA is the more valuable pound to keep. It sits outside the Cash Reserve, like the ISA, because the reserve exists so that a market fall never forces a sale.

What is not modelled. The annual exempt amount applies only to gains the plan's own sales realise — it is not used as a funding route in its own right, so the model does not harvest a gain up to the allowance each year. The 30-day share-matching rule, the starting rate for savings, and any Business Relief are also outside the model.

Attributed to lower-rate spouse first (PSA optimised)

DB tax-free lump sums, pension crystallisation cash, and annuity-purchase cash are credited 100% to whoever it actually belongs to. Other joint inflows (interest, surplus income) are split by the resulting running ratio, not the frozen day-1 one.

Treated as illiquid capital; protected via IIP for care

Net property value used for IHT calculation

Affects net worth and IHT figures only — not treated as a deduction from net income. Continued repayment is assumed to be funded from your target income, not in addition to it.

Compounds against the outstanding debt — not paid off during the plan, unlike a conventional mortgage

Not income — no income tax consequence

Same net-of-debt treatment as a conventional mortgage in the IHT calculation

Fully transferable between spouses · frozen at £325,000 until April 2031, then CPI-linked (current legislation) — so it shrinks in today's money until then

Tapers at £1 per £2 of estate above £2M (band and £2M point also frozen to April 2031, then CPI-linked); taper applies to the estate plus any gifts still within 7 years of death

Immediately exempt every year, regardless of the 7-year rule; not CPI-linked (fixed since 1981)

Taper relief by year band: 0–3 yrs 40% · 3–4 yrs 32% · 4–5 yrs 24% · 5–6 yrs 16% · 6–7 yrs 8% · 7+ yrs 0% (fully exempt). Gifts older than 7 years are never added back to the estate.

End age can be brought forward on the IHT page (e.g. to stop before the 7-year taper window) but is hard-capped at 2nd death — gifting can never continue beyond that point

If the portfolio can't fund everything in a given year, the gift is reduced or skipped first; only the amount actually paid out counts towards the gifting total and the 7-year PET history

Treated as two steps: a taxable pension withdrawal, then a gift of what is left after tax. Each withdrawal is 25% tax-free up to the remaining lump sum allowance, and the rest is taxed as that person’s income for the year, before any income drawdown. The model splits it between the two of you to pay the least tax that year (an unmarried couple each pay their own gift from their own pension). Only the growth pots are used — never the DC Defensive Pot, cash, the ISAs or the Non-ISA — so the Cash Reserve plays no part. If the growth pots can’t cover it, the gift is reduced, not taken from elsewhere. Nothing is taken from a person’s pension before the minimum pension age (55, or 57 from April 2028; protected pension ages are not modelled) — a gift due earlier is not paid. The gift still counts towards the 7-year rule. The tax paid is shown on the Gifting page, and as its own band on top of the income tax charts.

Counts towards the 7-year rule, like the annual gift, using whatever is left of that year’s £3,000 annual exemption (£6,000 for a couple). Cash Reserve first: cash, Premium Bonds and the Cash ISA are only used down to your Cash Reserve; the Non-ISA is used before the Stocks & Shares ISA. Non-ISA first: the Non-ISA, then the Stocks & Shares ISA, then the Cash Reserve. Pension: taken from the growth pots with income tax paid first, as in the row above. If the chosen sources can’t cover it, the gift is reduced.

Counts cash, Premium Bonds, both ISAs, the Non-ISA and the pensions, after State Pension and DB income. Pension money is counted at 85p in the pound: 25% comes out tax-free and the rest is assumed taxed at the 20% basic rate. A gift that would leave less is trimmed for that year, and gifting restarts once the plan is clear again. Gifts that can’t be paid because the money has run out are shown separately — that happens whether the floor is on or off.

Finance Act 2026 — undrawn DC pots form part of the taxable estate from April 2027. Applied as default planning position.

Each beneficiary's share is drawn evenly over a chosen number of years (1–20, default 5, set via the IHT page slider) and taxed by stacking each year's withdrawal on top of an assumed existing income (£30k/£75k/£150k for the basic/higher/additional-rate scenarios) using 2026/27 bands: Personal Allowance £12,570, basic rate to £50,270, higher rate to £125,140, additional rate above. Longer drawdown periods spread withdrawals across more years and lower bands, reducing the effective tax rate.

Whichever partner's age first exceeds their own death age, the model taxes THEIR OWN estate share alone: their own DC pot in full, plus their ownership share of the combined cash/ISA/property pools (set via the Property Ownership Split input, also used for cash/ISA). Taxed using their own individual £325k NRB / £175k RNRB — no transfer to the survivor, since they aren't married. Tax is paid from the shared liquid pools (cash, then ISA); the deceased's own DC pot then either passes to the survivor net of tax (as cash — note any inherited ISA share loses its tax-free wrapper, unlike for a married couple) or is excluded entirely, per the "Estate Passes To Survivor?" toggle on Page 1. The simulation then continues with only the survivor's remaining assets and income; at their own eventual death, IHT is calculated again on their own estate, also using individual allowances.

Each partner has their own annual gift amount and own start age (on their own age scale), rather than one shared amount. Each partner's contribution automatically stops at their own death, regardless of where the shared stop-age slider is set. Each partner's gifts are tracked against their own 7-year PET history and their own £3k annual exemption (not the £6k combined figure used for married couples), feeding into their own first-death IHT calculation above.

If both partners' deaths fall within the same modelled year, the model has no meaningful way to sequence them at this yearly resolution — the first-death mechanism above doesn't fire, and the estate is taxed once as a whole, still using individual (not married-combined) allowances.

Property excluded from means test via IIP structure

Run lazily — only when Combined Analysis page is active

At the DEFAULT (Balanced) returns: DC Long σ ≈ 16%; DC Short σ ≈ 5.5%; Cash ISA σ ≈ 1.2%; S&S ISA σ ≈ 16%; Cash σ ≈ 1.2%. The anchors these are scaled from: DC Long σ ≈ 13% at 4.5%; S&S ISA σ ≈ 13% at 4.5% (same anchor as DC Long); DC Short σ ≈ 4.5% at 3.5%. Only Cash and Cash ISA are genuinely fixed. DC Long, DC Short and the S&S ISA are scaled as baseVol + (your return − the anchor return) × 2.0, clamped at both ends — so raising a growth rate raises that pot’s volatility with it, and the figures above are the values at the defaults, not a ceiling.

A full engine run. DC Growth Pot, Stocks & Shares ISA and Non-ISA return 2 points more than your assumption; cash, Premium Bonds, Cash ISA and the DC Defensive Pot keep their own rates.

Matches current slider values

The base projection is a single deterministic run using your assumptions exactly as entered, with no market simulation at all. It is what the gifting, inheritance and sensitivity tables report. The median projection is the middle outcome of the 400 simulated paths on the Combined page — half the paths finish above it, half below. They are usually close but they are not the same number, and neither is a forecast. Quote the base projection when you mean “on these assumptions”, and the median when you mean “in the middle of the simulated range”.

A full engine run, as Optimistic but 2 points less.

A full engine run. Shares climb back to where they would have been over the 5 recovery years, so what is lost is what was SOLD while prices were down (sequence-of-returns risk) — worked out by the engine, not a fixed figure. Cash and the DC Defensive Pot are not hit.

A full engine run, as above.

A full engine run, as above.

A full engine run. A lost decade: the shortfall against your assumption is never made back.

Toggle, cost and duration set on Page 1. There is no default cost — the box starts empty and you enter your own figure; the duration defaults to 3 years. Start age defaults to the last N years before death unless overridden. Funded from the same drawdown hierarchy as lifestyle spending, and protected ahead of gifting if the portfolio runs short.

Conservative long-run assumption

Tax law changes post-modelling date are excluded

No dynamic re-allocation between spouses. The Cash ISA and the Stocks & Shares ISA each get their own opening ratio, but neither ratio moves after day 1 — later contributions and withdrawals do not change whose money the pool is treated as.

Unlike the ISA above, the cash ratio is recomputed from running totals rather than frozen at day 1: DB tax-free lump sums, pension crystallisation cash and annuity-purchase cash are credited in full to whoever they belong to. See “Cash ownership split” under Investments, Cash & Property.

Leave Mortgage — Years Remaining blank or 0 and the balance sits unchanged for the whole plan (interest-only, or update it yourself as it falls). Enter a number of years and it tapers straight-line to £0 over that period — equal reductions each year, not a real repayment schedule, so the early years fall faster than a real capital-and-interest mortgage would. Either way the remaining balance nets off the property in the IHT and net-worth figures.

No spending curve or variable needs modelling

Death ages and retirement ages are whole numbers

The Save/Load slots and the Compare page's A/B scenarios all use the browser's own local storage, tied to this specific browser on this specific device. Switching to a different browser (or a different phone/tablet/computer), clearing browsing data, or using a private/incognito window will not show previously saved scenarios. There's no automatic sync between devices. To move a plan, or keep a copy of it, use Inputs → Save a copy / move to another device: it gives a code you paste in on the other device (or keep in Notes or an email as a backup).

Which method applies is chosen on the Combined page (and independently for A/B on the Compare page); each method's own tax settings are configured in the "Pension Drawdown & Inheritance Settings" section on Page 1. The two Pension First methods reverse the order — the DC pension is drawn first and ISA/cash preserved instead — and Pension First with ISA Recycling adds a second stage that pays surplus pension, within that method's tax-band limit, into the Stocks & Shares ISA rather than spending it. The limit is a preference, not a cap: your income target and Cash Reserve come first, so pension is drawn above it if needed (see "Drawdown order"). Both suit larger estates with pension wealth surplus to lifetime needs: since unused pensions join the IHT estate from April 2027, spending the pension down while preserving ISA/cash can reduce the combined IHT + income tax hit on beneficiaries — not likely to help estates below the IHT threshold. The Compare page's Gross Estate / Total IHT Paid / Inheritance per Child row shows the actual impact for a given scenario. The full order each method uses is set out under "Drawdown order" in Bucket Strategy & Drawdown Hierarchy above.

They are taxed identically on withdrawal (both fully tax-free) and identically exposed to IHT, but they are not the same asset: one is cash and one is invested. So each compounds at its own slider rate for the whole plan, and they sit in different places in the drawdown order — the Cash ISA is ranked among the savings pots by its own expected return, while the Stocks & Shares ISA is pinned last. The Cash ISA also counts towards the Cash Reserve; the Stocks & Shares ISA sits outside it. The two are never merged into a single pool, and no blended rate is calculated anywhere.

Before 6 April 2027, and at any time for someone aged 65 or over, the only constraint is the combined £20k/person/yr allowance — exactly as today. Each person's age is checked independently in the model year the cap applies, so a couple where one partner is already 65 and the other isn't sees the cap enforced correctly for each. The projection's starting calendar year is used to work out which model year first falls on or after the reform — annual time-steps can't capture the exact mid-year 6 April cutover any more precisely than that.