Whose savings can move

The bridge pays the household’s spending from everything it holds outside a pension. So ‘Spare savings’ starts from the household’s savings and ISAs when work stops, and the rows beneath say whose each pot is: each person’s ISAs, each person’s own savings, and the joint savings.

Taking away what the bridge draws to its lowest point and the emergency fund leaves the spare. That figure belongs to the household as a whole, and only two parts of it can move into one person’s pension or ISA.

• Their own savings outside an ISA.
• The joint savings, less anything the other person has already moved.

Every ISA stays where it is, whoever holds it. Money taken out of one ISA and paid into another person’s ISA uses up an allowance and is no better sheltered than before, so the view does not offer it. A partner’s own savings stay where they are too, and appear on the partner’s own card.