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Retirement Number Calculation

A retirement number you can defend: a real spending baseline, guaranteed income counted, a chosen withdrawal rate, and projections tested against crashes, high inflation, early exit and a long life.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Then open the Marketplace in the app, search for Retirement Number Calculation, and click Install. It goes into your own files, and works offline from then on.

Before you start: this plan is general information to help you organise your own money decisions. It is not financial, investment, tax or legal advice. Check decisions that matter with a qualified, licensed adviser in your country, and remember that investing and trading can lose money.

What it installs.

1

Pillar

1

Area

50

Projects

205

Starter tasks

📈 Wealth & Investing

Retirement Number Calculation

Working out how much you need to retire, with spending estimates, withdrawal rates and projections tested against different scenarios.

  1. Twelve-month spending baseline from bank statements
  2. Target retirement age and planning horizon
  3. Inventory of retirement savings and pensions
  4. Guaranteed income floor in today's money
  5. Back-of-envelope number from a spending multiple
  6. Retirement spending budget by category
  7. Essential and discretionary spending split
  8. Retirement number assumptions register
  9. Retirement number spreadsheet model
  10. One-page retirement number statement
  11. Monthly spending log for retirement planning
  12. Quarterly progress check against the number
  13. Annual retirement number recalculation
  14. Annual pension statement reconciliation
  15. Personal inflation rate check
  16. Monthly saving shortfall tracker
  17. Recalculation triggers for big life changes
  18. Where the 4 per cent rule comes from
  19. Real returns, inflation and today's money
  20. Sequence of returns risk in your own numbers
  21. Reading Monte Carlo success rates
  22. Grossing up for tax on retirement income
  23. Survival odds for you and a partner
  24. Choosing a retirement planning calculator or software
  25. Choosing your withdrawal rate assumption
  26. Retirement age trade-off table
  27. Closing the gap with saving, age or spending
  28. Spending phases across retirement
  29. Big-ticket costs schedule for retirement
  30. Long-term care cost allowance
  31. Housing costs and home equity in the number
  32. Rules for counting uncertain lump sums
  33. Retiring into a market crash stress test
  34. High inflation decade stress test
  35. Forced early retirement stress test
  36. Surviving partner income stress test
  37. Ten-years-out retirement number checkpoint
  38. Five-years-out firming of the number
  39. Trial year on the retirement budget
  40. Paid second opinion on your retirement number
  41. Final go or no-go check before giving notice
  42. First retirement number in your twenties or thirties
  43. Late starter's number at fifty or older
  44. Single person's retirement number
  45. Costing a retirement in another country
  46. Supporting family members in the number
  47. Historical backtest across every start year
  48. Spending guardrails modelled in the number
  49. Pricing the essential floor with annuity quotes
  50. Sensitivity analysis of each assumption

Where it starts.

Each project arrives with its purpose, milestones and first tasks written out. Here is how the first three read.

Twelve-month spending baseline from bank statements

Every retirement number is a multiple of spending, so a guessed spending figure makes the whole number a guess. Pulling twelve months of bank and card statements, including annual bills such as insurance, car servicing and gifts, gives a real figure, and it is usually higher than the one people carry in their heads because irregular costs are forgotten.

First tasks

  • Download twelve months of statements for every current account and card
  • Remove transfers between your own accounts and money going into savings
  • Sort the remaining transactions into about fifteen spending categories
  • Ask the agent to flag annual or irregular bills missing from the categories
  • Write the annual total and monthly average at the top of the sheet

Target retirement age and planning horizon

Without a start date and an end date, a retirement number cannot exist. Choosing a provisional target age, plus a planning horizon that runs well past average life expectancy, fixes the two ends of every calculation that follows; both can move later, but the model needs them now.

First tasks

  • Write down the age you would like to stop full-time work and the range you could live with
  • Look up your state pension or social security age on the official government site
  • Note the earliest age you could draw on any private pension
  • Choose a planning horizon age and write one line on why

Inventory of retirement savings and pensions

You cannot measure a gap without knowing what is already there. One list of every pension, retirement account, tax-free savings wrapper and taxable investment account, with current values and the type of each, is the starting balance for every projection in this area.

First tasks

  • List every pension and investment account you know of in one sheet
  • Log in to each provider and record the current value
  • Record any defined benefit pension's projected income and pension age
  • Mark each pot as usable before or only after pension age
  • Total the earmarked assets and write the valuation date beside it

Make it yours.

Install Retirement Number Calculation, then tell Aurum the date you're aiming for. It checks whether the plan fits the weeks you actually have.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Blueprints are general information to help you organise your own work. They are not medical, financial, legal or other professional advice. See the Terms.