A Financial Plan in full
Dave and Sarah are invented. Their figures come from the same engine that builds every £1,500 Plan.
Dave and Sarah are invented. Their figures come from the same engine that builds every £1,500 Plan.
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. Their question was whether Dave could 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 left unchecked 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 £3,500 a month, by their own estimate.
£4,180 a month, measured by the two-minute Healthcheck. The gap of nearly £700 a month comes to around £59,000 over the seven years to 61.
Their spending ran to forty-odd transactions a week across cards, apps and direct debits. A plan built on £3,500 a month when the true figure is £4,180 runs short about eighteen months in.
He keeps working two days a week until 63, earning about £14,000 a year.
In today's money. This is less than they spend now, because the mortgage will be paid off and the children's costs will fall.
A house deposit, some time in the next five years. They treated it as fixed, so the plan pays it whether or not it fits.
Dave assumed a sale would raise £150,000. We modelled it at zero and again at £150,000, to show how much of the plan depends on the sale.
We projected every year from now to age 100, with UK tax applied at each step.
The money runs out at 88. Both of them could live past 88, and Sarah's family history suggests she should plan beyond it.
It lasts past 100, with roughly £280,000 left. The difference between the two answers rests on a business that had never been valued.
Run two thousand times with the good and bad years reshuffled, the no-sale version held up in 41% of them.
The retirement date and the business sale are one decision, which they had been treating as two separate ones.
Each result shows how many years earlier the money runs out.
Minus 7 years. This was the largest single risk in their plan. The damage comes from the fall arriving just as they start drawing, as explained in why the order of returns matters.
Minus 5 years, if they contribute what they said they would want to.
Minus 2 years. This was smaller than they had expected.
Minus 4 years of headroom. A longer life means more years of spending from the same money.
It had never been valued, and Dave did not know whether it could sell without him in it. What would it take to make this business worth something to somebody else?
Redirected, it's about £59,000 by 61 and moves the no-sale answer from 88 to 92. Is any of that £700 buying you something you'd miss?
A market fall in those years costs them seven years at the end. Would holding two years of spending in cash at 61 be worth what it costs in growth?
Her local government pension is inflation-linked and provides the income floor under everything else. Does that change how you feel about her going to three days?
Now you know the price, is it still fixed? They kept it in the plan.
The Plan does not recommend funds, products or pension transfers, because that is regulated advice and Buzz is not authorised to give it. Where a decision needs regulated advice, we say so and can introduce you to Equity & General (FCA 474163). The introduction is optional, and we tell you about E&G's commission to Buzz before it.
Dave instructs a professional business valuer, because half the plan rests on his own estimate.
Four weeks of tracking spending against the Healthcheck categories.
Neither of them knew what it held or what it cost to run. Tracing it is an admin task.
Neither had one. On this projection the estate is over the nil-rate bands, so the projection also shows an inheritance tax figure. Wills and inheritance tax planning go to Buzz Legal.
Dave chose to stop at 62 after seeing what one extra year did to the numbers. He has spent six months making the business less dependent on him. They found £480 of the missing £700 a month.
No. They are invented, because publishing a real client's finances would breach their confidence even with their permission. The arithmetic is real. Their figures come from the same engine that builds every Plan, run on that set of inputs, with the same tax rules, stress tests and two thousand reshuffled runs. Their circumstances are drawn from patterns in our own client work: an owner-manager whose business has never been valued, a spouse with a public sector scheme doing more work than either of them realised, and a monthly spending figure that turned out to be wrong by several hundred pounds.
The shape will. The sections are the same six every time and they arrive in the same order, so you always get your position, your goals, the projection, the stress tests, what it means, and what to do in the next ninety days. What differs is which parts carry the weight. For a couple with defined benefit pensions the stress tests look completely different, because a guaranteed inflation-linked income limits what a bad market can do to them. For somebody with rental property the tax section becomes the long one. For a single person with no dependants the longevity modelling matters more and the estate section matters less. Every section is written about your position, using your own figures.
Because a plan that only works if an asset sells depends on that sale, and you should know how much. Modelling it at zero shows you the floor: what happens if the sale never comes, or comes at a fraction of the hoped-for price, or falls through in the year you needed it. Modelling it at £150,000 shows you the version Dave already had in his head. The gap between those two answers measures how much of the retirement rests on one sale. For Dave and Sarah that gap was most of the plan. It also showed them that work on the business would move the plan further than extra saving.
Then you have found it while there is still time to change it. A problem discovered at 68 is far harder to fix, because working another two years may no longer be realistic and spending less means giving up things that matter. Dave and Sarah's no-sale answer came back at 41%. That result is the reason Dave is now making the business saleable, so that somebody could buy it. At 54, a bad answer leaves nine years of working life in which to improve it. At 68, the options left are fewer and smaller.
About three weeks end to end, most of it our modelling time. Their side of it came to three pieces of work: the two-minute Healthcheck to establish what they spend, roughly an hour talking through what they wanted retirement to look like in terms specific enough to model, and ninety minutes going through the finished document and arguing with it. The weeks in between are where the projection gets built, the stress tests get run and the document gets written. Three weeks is typical. It runs longer when pension values are slow coming back from providers, which is the usual hold-up.
An hour with a planner on whether the Financial Plan suits your position.
A written plan: every year to age 100 with UK tax applied, each risk measured in years, and your next ninety days.