The stress test, in more detail

Only growth varies between scenarios. Inflation, tax rules, spending, earnings, pensions, care and the plan’s length are the same in every one.

Each year one random result moves the market, and every invested pot not split into holdings moves with it. Bank savings get a result of their own. A pot split into holdings moves holding by holding, each following equities by its own correlation. How far a year can swing is the volatility in the assumptions you set.

A year you have logged keeps what really happened, so the fan spreads only from the last logged year.

• The fan’s middle line takes the middle result for each year separately, so no single scenario follows it.
• “When the plan might fall short” only ever rises, and ends at the share of scenarios that fell short.
• “What could be left at the end” counts a scenario that fell short as nothing left, which is why “A poor scenario left” can read zero.
• “Falls short at age” is the typical age at which scenarios first fell short, for the person the plan runs to.

With a crash scenario on, the crash sits inside every scenario. The page also gives the share that paid for everything in the same runs without the crash, so the difference is the crash alone.