Worked example
What a Plan actually looks like
Nobody should spend £399 on a document they've never seen. So here is one, start to finish — the people are invented, the arithmetic is not.
Nobody should spend £399 on a document they've never seen. So here is one, start to finish — the people are invented, the arithmetic is not.
He's 54 and owns a plumbing and heating firm with four staff. She's 52 and works four days a week for a housing association. Two grown children, one still at home. They came to us with a question they'd been circling for three years: can Dave stop at 61?
£310,000 across four pensions — two of Dave's from before the business, Sarah's local government scheme, and a small SIPP nobody had looked at since 2019. £48,000 in cash and ISAs. A house worth £395,000 with £62,000 left on the mortgage.
Dave took £12,570 in salary and roughly £40,000 in dividends. Sarah earned £31,000. Between them, about £70,000 net once the tax was done.
“About three and a half thousand a month.” Both said it without hesitating. Both were confident.
£4,180. The Healthcheck found it in two minutes. Nearly £700 a month they could not account for, which over the nine years to 61 is around £75,000.
Almost nobody is right about their own spending, and almost everybody is confident. It's not carelessness — it's forty-odd transactions a week across cards, apps and direct debits. But a plan built on £3,500 when the truth is £4,180 is a plan that quietly fails about eighteen months in, and nobody can work out why.
“Retire comfortably” can't be modelled. So the first job was turning it into things that can be.
Not fully — he wanted to keep two days a week for a couple of years. Worth about £14,000 a year until 63.
In today's money. Less than they spend now, because the mortgage would be gone and the children's costs falling.
A deposit, some time in the next five years. Non-negotiable, which matters — it comes out of the plan whether it fits or not.
Dave assumed £150,000 on a sale. We modelled it at zero, then again at £150,000, because a plan that only works if the business sells is a bet rather than a plan.
Every year from now to 100, with UK tax applied properly at each step. Here's what came back.
The money runs out at 88. Not a disaster, and not comfortable either — both of them have a decent chance of seeing 88, and Sarah's family history suggests she should plan past it.
It lasts past 100, with roughly £280,000 left. Which tells you something important: their whole plan was resting on an asset nobody had valued.
Run two thousand times with the good and bad years reshuffled, the no-sale version held up in only 41% of them. That number changed the conversation entirely.
Not “you can't retire”. It meant the retirement date and the business sale were the same decision, and they'd been treating them as separate ones.
Each answer in years, because “a 12% reduction in terminal wealth” means nothing to anybody.
Minus 7 years. The biggest single risk on the page, and the one they'd never considered — because it isn't about how bad the fall is, it's about when it lands.
Minus 5 years, if they contribute what they said they'd want to. Worth knowing before it happens rather than during.
Minus 2 years. Smaller than they feared, which was a relief and genuinely useful.
Minus 4 years of headroom. Longevity isn't a risk in the normal sense, but it behaves like one in a projection.
Five things the numbers were telling them. Each one ends in a question, because they're their decisions.
It's roughly half the plan. Nobody had ever valued it, and Dave had no idea whether it was saleable without him in it. What would it take to make this business worth something to somebody else?
Redirected, it's about £75,000 by 61 and moves the no-sale answer from 88 to 92. Is any of that £700 buying you something you'd miss?
Not the whole retirement — those three years specifically. Would holding two years of spending in cash at 61 be worth what it costs in growth?
It's inflation-linked and it's the floor under everything. Does that change how you feel about her going to three days?
That's all. Now you know the price, is it still non-negotiable? They said yes immediately, which is a good answer.
No fund recommendations. No “you should consolidate those pensions”. Those are regulated advice and we're not authorised to give them — where a decision genuinely needs one, we say so and can introduce you to Equity & General (FCA 474163), optional and with the commission disclosed beforehand.
Four things, with dates. Not twenty.
Properly, by someone who does it for a living. Half the plan rests on a number Dave invented.
Four weeks of actually looking, using the Healthcheck categories rather than guessing.
Nobody knew what was in it or what it cost to run. Find out. That's admin, not advice.
Neither had one. On this projection the estate is over the nil-rate bands, so it also puts a number on the inheritance tax — which is a conversation for Buzz Legal, not for us.
Dave is stopping at 62, not 61 — his choice, after seeing what one year did. He's spent six months making the business less dependent on him, which was worth more than any change to their saving. And they found £480 of the £700, which was enough.
No. They are invented, and deliberately so — publishing a real client's finances would be a betrayal even with their permission. The arithmetic is real: those figures come from the same engine that builds every Plan, run on that set of inputs. If you put their numbers into our free projection tool you will get the same answers.
The shape will. The sections are the same six every time and in the same order. What differs is which parts matter — for a couple with defined benefit pensions the stress tests look completely different, and for somebody with rental property the tax does. The plan is a piece of work about your position, not a template with your name at the top.
Because a plan that only works if an asset sells is a bet, and you should know which one you are making. Modelling it at zero shows you the floor. Modelling it at £150,000 shows you the upside. The gap between those two answers is the honest measure of how much rests on that sale — and for Dave and Sarah it was most of the plan, which nobody had realised.
Then it is worth considerably more than a comfortable one, because there is still time. The worst possible version of this is finding out at 68. Dave and Sarah's no-sale answer was 41% — that is not a nice number to be handed, and it is precisely why they now have a business worth selling.
About three weeks end to end, most of it us doing the modelling. Their part was the two-minute Healthcheck, an hour talking about what they actually wanted, and ninety minutes going through the result.