Spending in later life

Landfall assumes a household spends less once everyone in it has passed a certain age. The age it starts and how far spending falls are both on Edit plan, under Spending & life events, and the whole thing can be switched off.

It changes your spending phases and nothing else. Care fees, loan repayments and one-off events were each entered as themselves, so they are left alone. The cash held back for emergencies follows spending down, because that target is months of it.

Where later-life spending is on, every chart marks the year the fall starts with a dotted line, and Plan detail and the Planned spending figure both say it in words.

The starting values in Edit plan follow the national survey of household spending. In it, households headed by someone past the starting age spend less than households headed by someone a decade younger. Other studies find most of that fall is travel, eating out and recreation, while the essentials hold steady.

Research that follows the same households through retirement finds far less of a fall per person, so the evidence is mixed. One reason is that a household which loses a partner keeps paying for the same home.