Help
A projection is easier to trust once you can see how it was made. These pages explain how Landfall works, what each figure on your plan is telling you, and where the model stops.
Getting started
What Landfall is for, and how to get a first answer out of it.
- What Landfall doesIt carries your household’s money forward, one year at a time, and tells you whether it lasts.
- Finding your way aroundWhere a plan’s pages live on each device, and what the icons stand for.
- Who it is forThe households Landfall models well, and the ones it will not serve.
- Making your first planRough figures first. Accuracy is easier once you can see the shape.
- Reading your State Pension forecastWhich figures on a gov.uk forecast the plan wants, and where each one goes.
- Reading your State Pension forecast, in more detailWhat the plan does with the figure once it is in: when it starts, how it rises, and what changes it.
- Estimating your retirement spendingFrom what you spend now to what you will spend then, one piece at a time.
- What enough looks likeSeveral bodies have put a price on a year of retirement. What their figures can tell you, and what they cannot.
- How the Retirement Living Standards are builtGroups of the public agree a basket, researchers price it, and three levels come out.
- Other ways of measuring enoughA share of your earnings, a surveyed average, a minimum. Each answers a different question.
- What the baskets leave outRent, care, family, the big one-off costs, and the shape of a retirement over time.
- Setting your plan beside the standardsWhat you see when you ask ‘Is this enough?’, and what it cannot tell you.
- A way of planningBuild it rough, find the weak point, test it, decide, and come back each year.
- Reading your resultsWhat the verdict, the figures, the timeline and the charts each tell you.
- The home stretchThe tab for the years before your last pension starts.
- The home stretch in more detailThe views under Try a change on the Home stretch tab.
- Pension or ISA firstWhat each wrapper does with spare savings, so the order of the two moves is yours.
- Whose savings can moveSpare savings counts the whole household’s money, and only part of it can move into one person’s pension or ISA.
The app itself
Your data, the subscription, and where to go when a question is about you.
How the numbers work
The model behind the figures, and where each figure comes from.
- Today’s money and future moneyWhy every figure appears twice, and which of the two to read.
- Why Landfall counts in tax yearsThe allowances a household uses start again each April, so the plan’s years do too.
- How the projection worksWhole tax years, in order, with growth exactly as you set it.
- Selling or downsizing the homeWhat happens when the plan sells the home, or swaps it for another, in a year you choose.
- Where the figures come fromEvery tax figure in Landfall traces back to a named source and the date it was read.
- The assumptions you setLandfall starts you with sensible defaults. All of them are yours to change.
- Your withdrawal rateWhat the rate on the plan page measures, and what it can be set beside.
- Your withdrawal rate, in more detailWhere the safe withdrawal rules come from, why their history may not repeat, and what a long retirement changes.
- How your State Pension risesOne assumption sets how the State Pension grows each year, and you can change it to try a different rule.
- Tax in your planWhat Landfall taxes, for whom, and where to see the working.
- Tax in your plan, in more detailThe order each tax is worked in, the cases at its edges, and where each one shows.
- How your tax is collectedThrough a tax code, a letter or a return, and why a month’s tax can differ from the plan’s.
- What Landfall covers across the UKFour nations, each with its own income tax and its own care rules, and where the coverage stops.
- What Landfall covers across the UK, in more detailWhich figures depend on each person’s nation, a couple in two nations, and where the nation makes no difference.
- The words Landfall usesThe words a plan uses, and what each of them means here.
- What the pension warnings meanEach warning about a pension, and what the plan did about it.
- What the savings and spending warnings meanEach warning about savings, spending or care, and what the plan did about it.
- What the home warnings meanEach warning about the home’s sale, and what the plan did about it.
The choices you make
The settings that change what a plan does, rather than what it starts from.
- Pots and holdingsFour kinds of pot, and how you tell Landfall what each will make.
- Taking money from your pensionThree ways tax-free cash can come out, and what each does to the tax on the rest.
- Taking money from your pension, in more detailWhat each route does to a pot, and how planned tax-free cash fits alongside.
- Final salary and career average pensionsA pension the scheme promises, and the three stretches over which it rises.
- Final salary and career average pensions, in more detailWhere the three stretches meet, what a year of work adds, and where a lump sum goes.
- The order money is drawnHow Landfall decides which pot pays for a year’s spending.
- The order money is drawn, in more detailWhat the plan counts as need, what happens after the last step, and where a surplus goes.
- ChargesWhat you pay to hold your money, and what it comes to over a lifetime.
- Charges, in more detailWhere a charge is set, when it is taken, and how to read what it costs.
- Spending in later lifeWhy a plan spends less from a chosen age, and where to change it.
- Later-life careA scenario you switch on, built from published ranges rather than single figures.
Testing a plan, and keeping it current
What happens after the first answer.
- The stress testThe same plan run hundreds of times, with luck that varies.
- The stress test, in more detailWhat varies between scenarios, what never does, and how to read each card.
- When the plan runs shortWhat a shortfall is, the shapes it takes, and where to see its cause.
- Comparing plansTwo plans side by side, or one plan against the way it started.
- Keeping your plan currentLogging the year that has gone, and recording what you already know is coming.
- Writing down your intentionsWhat you would do if markets fell, in your own words, written while all is calm.
See your own year
Will your money last?
Enter what you have, earn and spend. The first answer is free.
Coming to the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
- The projection is free
- No account to make
- Your figures stay on your device