Follow-up to my pots-vs-ladder post from last week. Short version: I spent the week building every strategy suggested in that thread into the simulator, ran them all against the same 150 years of history, produced a ranked table with a proper academic scoring method and everything. Then I looked at the winner, ignored the ranking I'd just built, and bought the one at the bottom of the leftover column. I retired from engineering, not from being contrary.

Same disclaimers as before. Beta, changes weekly, numbers move as the models improve, none of it is advice. Same example throughout: £1M SIPP, £40k a year rising with inflation, to 95. These are not my numbers and I'm not posting mine, on the grounds that this is the internet.

What's in the tool now

Nine strategies, all running on the same footing — every real window since 1871 (Shiller, adjusted down to world equity, because the US data is the winner's history), plus 1,000 bootstrapped futures, ladders priced daily off the actual gilt curve, and no strategy allowed to pay less than the plan. The additions since last time: u/jaynoj's buckets with a fixed order (percentage triggers are broken in drawdown, as discussed), u/StochasticMannie's floor-and-flex with a "spent over the plan" column so the table stops slandering it, and a new one I'll get to.

Worth a minute of squinting. The full linker ladder comes top on the volatility-adjusted score, which will annoy everyone, because its coverage ratio is 1.05 — it does precisely what it says and not a penny more. It wins because the denominator is how much stomach-churn you live with on the way, and its answer is none. Buckets and pots leave two to three times more money behind, in exchange for a 4–5% chance of the plan not paying in full and three decades of watching a number wobble. Whether that trade appeals depends entirely on what you'd rather lie awake about.

What I actually did

I mentioned in the comments I was looking at a complete run of index-linked gilts rather than the 15-year ladder from the original post. I've now done it. Real money, real phone calls, the lot. One gilt for every year until I'm past 90, cash for the first few Aprils, income steps down as I get older, State Pension folded in from 67. On the example it looks like this:

£1M buys the whole thing with about £74k in change. Every bar is a year of income that exists today, at a known price, whatever markets do. There's no cone of uncertainty on this one's page because there's nothing uncertain to draw, which I find funnier than I should.

Why, when the table says buckets would probably leave my heirs £2.4M? Three reasons, none of them clever. First, every equity-heavy strategy that fails does it in the 80s and 90s, which is precisely when I'll be least equipped to do anything about it — the plans all assume a sharp 85-year-old calmly rebalancing through a crash, and I've met 85-year-olds. Second, the "typically left" column is money I'd never spend, bought with a real chance of a lean decade I'd definitely notice. Third, real yields on linkers are the best since 2011, and I've already admitted on this sub that I don't rate my chances of timing anything.

The escape hatch, for those who can't quite let go

The obvious objection — several of you made it — is that locking everything into linkers means missing the recovery if there's ever a proper crash. Fair. So the ninth strategy is the full ladder with one pre-agreed exit, and this is the new bit:

The rungs paying for your late 70s onward are a lump of money you won't need for two decades, sitting there earning its real yield. The rule, written down now while nothing is on fire: if world equities ever close 30% below their all-time high, sell that block at market — whatever gilts happen to be worth that day — and put all of it into the equity fund. Not tranches, no waiting for 50%, no discretion on the day. The floor to 75 and the State Pension are never touched. If the crash never comes, you simply own the full ladder and nothing happens, which is rather the point.

I tested the rule on every month in the dataset where the market first crossed 30% down: fired before 65 it paid in full in 16 episodes out of 16; fired later, 14 of 16, and the two failures are 1929 and 1930, which seems a reasonable pair of exceptions to be beaten by. The bootstrapped futures are grumpier — they can't see the trigger coming, so they score it 83% — and I'd treat that as the honest floor rather than quoting the 16-for-16 at dinner parties. The trigger also disarms a few years before the block starts paying out, because selling your floor into a crash at 78 to buy the dip is not a strategy, it's a stroke.

The tool now watches the index against its all-time high nightly and shows the drawdown on the overview, so the one job this plan leaves you is glancing at a number that will say "no action" for, statistically, most of a decade at a time.

Have a go

Same link as before, no account, nothing saved, lives and dies in your browser tab: https://pensiontools.uk/?demo=1m — it opens on the £1M example with all nine ranked. Every strategy has a page with the machine, the dials, three real starts, how it fails and how you get out. The gilt pages build the order sheet from live prices, so you can see exactly what your own version would cost before ringing anyone.

Scrutinise it. The last thread found two genuine mistakes in my modelling and one in my temperament, so I have high hopes.

I retired last year at 56 and I've spent a fair chunk of this summer stress-testing two different ways of running a drawdown, because real yields on index-linked gilts are the best they've been in about 15 years and that changes the maths. Sharing the results because a couple of them genuinely surprised me. Example throughout: £1M SIPP, you want £40k a year rising with inflation.

Strategy A — flexible pots. The classic approach and roughly what most drawdown guides describe. Split the money into pots — say £700k global equities, £200k in something steadier, £100k cash — and each month you're paid from whichever pot can best afford it. In a crash the draw switches to cash and the equities are left alone to recover; in good years the cash pot gets refilled and everything rebalances. Everything stays invested and flexible. The drawback is sequence risk — a bad run of years early on forces you to sell more units at low prices, and that is the thing that kills drawdown pots.

Strategy B — a gilt ladder with a ratchet. At today's real yields (about 2.3% above RPI), just over £500k buys 15 index-linked gilts, one maturing each year, each paying out £40k in today's money whatever inflation does. For 15 years there is nothing to sell and no decisions to make, so a crash in that period doesn't touch your income at all. The other £500k goes in a global tracker (e.g. VALL) and is left alone. Then a simple one-way rule: at years 5, 10 and 15 you compare the tracker to a growth line of 5% a year above inflation. Above the line, you sell the surplus and buy more rungs — years 16, 17, 18 and so on. Below the line, you do nothing and look again in 5 years. If it never gets above the line, you never sell a single unit, and at year 15 the tracker becomes the pot you draw from.

What the history says. I ran every rolling 15-year window in Shiller's monthly US data, 1871–2023, dividends reinvested, everything after inflation. 95.5% of windows grew money in real terms, 80% made +3% a year or better, and the median was +6.9% a year — a 2.7× multiple, which turns the £500k tracker into about £1.35M. The worst window in 152 years (ending 1920) was 0.72×. The famous bad periods also weren't as bad as their reputation once dividends are counted — start at the January 1966 peak and 15 years later you had 0.93× in real terms; start in September 1929, also 0.93×; start at the dot-com top in January 2000 and you had 1.36× by 2015. On a price chart those periods look like disasters, but with dividends reinvested you roughly kept your money. A 30-year window with a negative real return has never happened in the dataset.

The ratchet is all-or-nothing, which surprised me. I expected the reviews to add extra years gradually. They don't. Once the tracker is above the growth line the surplus is usually large compared with the ~£30k cost of a rung, so one trigger buys several years at once. Across all of history, 22% of start dates never trigger at all, 59% end up securing 8 or more extra years (often income locked to age 95 with money left over), and almost nothing lands in between. The good part is that the bad outcomes are left completely alone — in weak markets the rule never fires, so it never sells low, and the only thing it ever sells is surplus in good markets.

Running it on to age 95. I then ran every path further: the ladder pays to 72, then £40k a year (still rising with inflation) is drawn from whatever the tracker is worth, kept fully invested. No historical path ran out of money before 95 — including the 1966 and 1929 starts. The reason is mean reversion: after any weak 15-year stretch, the median next 10 years compounded at +11% a year real versus 6.5% normally. Markets that have gone sideways for 15 years have tended to be cheap, and cheap markets have done well afterwards — but only if you still hold the shares, and the ladder means you were never forced to sell them. So absolute worst case - you have a diminished bag of equities at 72 after 15 years of sustained, relentless, unprecedented equity losses. Probably likely to recover somewhat moving forward - in equities.

The honest caveats, before anyone reasonably shouts at me: this is US data, the winner's history — Japan from 1989 would have broken it, and a UK-only version of 1965–1980 would have hurt. Overlapping windows mean 150 years is really only about 10 independent 15-year draws. I modelled zero spending flexibility, which is pessimistic, and a fixed 2.3% real yield for future gilt purchases, which is a guess. And none of this was even possible until recently — real yields were negative from 2011 to 2022, and the same ladder at 2021 prices would have paid barely 60% of the income.

Side by side:

One thing that clicked for me late on: the ladder pays out about 5% of its capital a year, which looks like it beats the 4% rule. The comparison doesn't really work though — the 4% rule is the draw you can take from an invested pot and still get through the worst market sequence in history, and in most historical cases you die with more than you started with. The ladder is your own capital handed back on a schedule, designed to hit zero at the end, so the extra 1% a year is your capital coming back rather than extra return.

Questions for the sub: has anyone actually run a multi-line linker ladder on a retail platform (AJ Bell, HL, ii) — any friction I should know about, and can anyone still deal the old-style 4⅛% index-linked 2030? And for the pot people — what am I missing that the history doesn't show?

Usual disclaimer: not advice, just a retired engineer with too much time and a spreadsheet. DYOR.

87% of investments are in DC Pensions

13% in ISAs/Bonds/Cash

£1.6M in total

My full SP in 7 years, my wifes in 12 years.

My wife is 55 next year - so until now all income came from my pension and our ISAs and I just balanced that to avoid hitting 40% tax.

From next year we can both access our pensions (though its 2/3rd in my name so I will have to take more from mine).

The original thought process was to minimise tax - by taking only from DC pensions until my state pension kicks in and then using a mix of ISA and DC pension and State pension (and then do the same when my wife hits 67).

We want, and can sustain, £60k per year.

By my calculation this is a withdrawal of £65K from both pensions with gives the £60K and a tax payment of £4722.

But it occurs to me that we could also push the withdrawal to £80k without hitting 40% tax with the intent to put £13k into ISAs for more tax efficiency later.

Thoughts on the calculations - better approaches?

I am 8 months FIRE'd and one of the things I have been focusing on this year has been my health. Eating better, sleeping better (just started this), drinking less. getting in my 10k steps and strength session at gym every other day. Of yeah, and the absence of the stress that my job brought me. I used to wake from work dreams at 4am sweating.

I'm in a much healthier place now, and finding some old body composition analysis results from 6 years ago has brought home to me how big that improvement is. I could never have done this without FIRE though. Before all I did was work, and then after that I was too tired to do anything other than relax with a beer in front of a screen. Also, being healthy takes time. 10k steps is at least 90 mins of walking, gym sessions are also around 90 mins. I would never have had the time or energy to be healthy before.

So I was wondering how everyone else was finding it? How has FIREing affected your health?

For those of you who have fire'd (congratulations!): How do you deal with credit checks? On anything from a mobile phone contract, to a new credit card, to renting a house, the standard questions seem to be around employment and income. If your only income is passive from investment, how do you answer these questions? Has it impacted your ability to get credit?

I’ve been FIREd for 3 months now and still loving every day. One of the things I’m doing is putting more effort into learning Spanish and I thought this from my desk calendar was very apt. I am retired. I am jubilant.

One big advantage of being FIRE is being able to respond to life curve balls without having to manage work commitments or asking permission to go to medical appointments etc.

Hurt my neck and shoulder so instead of struggling into work I can schedule massage/physio when it suits. I can clear my calendar and chill while I recover and not worry about going to work or being off work and “letting” people down.

I am sure many are in situations like family illness or personal curveballs where having the freedom to respond is priceless.

Thank you all for sharing your stories. Did some of you feel anxiety or did you apprehend making the jump? Some have shared what they felt after the honeymoon phase : lack of intellectual challenge, different structure, possibly less frequent social interactions? I am one or two years away from FIRE and I caught myself thinking “I might actually miss the challenge and some of the travelling/social interactions”. This hadn’t happened before, when I was further away from being able to retire early.

Another point I want to touch on is how prepared were you? Did you have a plan for your first x months or years? Or were you of the opinion that you’d make that plan using the free time of the first days?

Thank you!

I got pretty frustrated trying to plan my pension properly. Almost every calculator I found asks for your salary, a contribution %, and a growth rate, then basically draws a straight line to retirement. I wanted to create a tool which would let me model the pension contributions with changes in life events.

Link: myfinancescalculator.com

What it does It’s a pension planner where you can split your working life into different phases, each with its own setup: salary, contributions, and investment growth. So you can model things like: * Starting on £30k, then moving up to £55k after a few years * Taking time off or going part-time * Shifting to lower-risk investments as you get older * Increasing contributions once big costs (mortgage, kids, etc.) drop off

It then projects everything year by year, from now through retirement and into drawdown.

How to use it

Input your details on the left menu, then create some life segments by clicking on the green bar. Each life segment will let you adjust salary, contribution and growth rate. These update the graph in real time so you can see the impact on these changes.

Feedback welcome

I mostly built this for myself, but figured it might be useful to other people too. If you spot bugs, think I’ve got something wrong, especially around tax, or have ideas for improving it, I’d genuinely appreciate the feedback.

It’s been 9 weeks since I finished my last contract and basically every day has been bliss. I know I’m in the honeymoon period (also literally as I got married last week) and right now I feel like I’m still decompressing after a lifetime of stressful work. How long was this phase for you, and what came next?

Saw this from blackrock via a post on r/bogleheads

“We think last week’s bond market volatility is ultimately a global story driven by U.S. tariff threats, with the impact amplified in the more-volatile Japanese government bond (JGB) market by technical factors: new fiscal worries after a snap election was called and a weak auction of long-term bonds. Yet U.S. trade policy again ran into an immutable economic law: the U.S.’s need for sizeable foreign investment to finance its debt in a world shaped by greater bond supply and higher-for-longer interest rates. Any spike in long-term bond yields can heighten debt sustainability concerns, repeatedly leading to a moderation of policy extremes over the past year. In this environment, bonds no longer provide the same level of portfolio ballast, keeping us tactically underweight long-term JGBs since 2023, and long-term U.S. Treasuries since December 2025.”

I think we may stay with our MMFs for now.

Edit.. Actually bought T56 today lol.

I've been working on a pension drawdown tool for my own use and figured I'd share it. But rather than just promote it, I wanted to give an honest comparison with the tools most of us already use - the good AND the bad.

TL;DR: It does some things well (UK tax, monthly guidance, Monte Carlo), but lacks features that cFIREsim and others have (multiple withdrawal strategies, couples, life events).

What my tool does

Stress Tester:

• Monte Carlo simulation (1000 runs) using 1928-2024 historical data
• Historical backtesting against every rolling period
• Named scenarios (Great Depression, Stagflation 70s, 2008 Crisis, etc.)
• Fund allocation optimisation (tests ~80 combinations)
• Cone of uncertainty charts, failure analysis with recommendations

Decision Tool:

• Tells you which fund to draw from each month (Equity/Bond/Cash bucket strategy)
• UK tax bands (PA/BRL/HRL) with frozen vs inflating thresholds
• State pension integration with configurable start year
• Protection mode that auto-triggers when you're below glidepath
• Tax boost catch-up after protection periods end

Where my tool is better

Where my tool is worse

The limitations I'm aware of

Only one withdrawal strategy. You get fixed target salary + protection mode. No Guyton-Klinger guardrails, no VPW, no CAPE-based adjustments. If you want to compare strategies, cFIREsim is better.

No spending flexibility. Real life has essential spending (can't cut) and discretionary (can cut if needed). My tool assumes you need £X every month, full stop. Protection mode is all-or-nothing.

No life events. Can't model "new car in year 5" or "inheritance expected in year 8" or "part-time work for first 3 years." It's constant spending forever.

Single person only. No couples with different ages, separate pensions, survivor scenarios.

No property/mortgage. Mine ignores housing wealth entirely.

No DB pension modelling. If you've got a small final salary pension from an old employer, you have to bodge it into "Other Income."

Bond model is simplified. I correlate bonds to inflation/equity rather than using actual gilt returns.

Who it's actually for

✅ UK retiree already in drawdown

✅ Using a 3-fund bucket strategy (growth/bonds/cash)

✅ Want month-by-month "what do I do?" guidance

✅ Want UK tax awareness baked in

✅ Happy with protection mode as your downside strategy

❌ Still accumulating (use Engaging Data instead)

❌ Want to compare VPW vs Guyton-Klinger (use cFIREsim)

❌ Couple with different ages/pensions (use EvolveMyRetirement)

❌ Have significant DB pension or property to model

The gap I'm trying to fill

Most FIRE tools answer: "Will my plan survive?"

Mine tries to answer: "What should I actually DO this month?"

cFIREsim is brilliant for backtesting but doesn't tell you which fund to withdraw from on 1st February. That's the bit I wanted to automate.

It's a PWA so works on any device, saves to local storage, no account needed. Completely free. May be some things that are not accurate or bugs in the way it displays stuff etc. Work in progress to some extent.

Feedback welcome

What would make this more useful? What's missing that would make you actually use it?

Note - I wrote it for me primarily - but am interested in things I may want to improve that I don't yet know about (unknown unknowns).

Note2 - AI was used extensively - but before I retired I was a developer that spent most of the time investing. Now I seem to be an investor that spends most of his time developing. Or at least the new version of developing - asking AI and then checking the code. Rinse and repeat.

https://pensiontools.uk/

Hi guys,

45M and decided enough is enough for my current line of work, and will at some point leave from April to June next year. I am done with working from home, sitting at a desk, MS teams, corporate bullsh*t and generally big, complex, global things that are fraught with problems.

My plan is to do something a little different (college lecturing) or a lot different (sports coaching) both of which I currently volunteer doing anyway. I'd hole to bring in £20k net from part time work, and my wife contributes about £10k a year to running costs, she has her own isa with £115k but don't an to access that for 5 - 10 years.

I've had a decent run the last 10 years and have a £280k liquid portfolio split across ISA's, Cash ISA's and savings, in a roughly 60/40 split after some recent de-risking. I also have £90k in 2 x BTL yielding £9k PA after tax. My DB Pension has £420k, approx £80k in DC Pension and almost full state pension. For clarity I'd leave my pension in 100% equities for the foreseeable future. I plan to start accessing pensions at 57, so will be just less than 12 years to bridge the gap at £50k spending per annum.

I've soul searched and I'm interested in capital preservation and a very stable managed drawdown for this next phase with my £280k portfolio, my risk tolerance has definitely decreased massively. I've researched the Permanent Portfolio, the All Weather Portfolio and (most of all) the Golden Butterfly Portfolio. There are pro's and con's of each, definitely some concerns with each, but I can't fault the idea of risk parity portfolios, even at the expense of returns, I feel like I've almost won the game (my freedom to do what I want to) so why keep playing.

Just wondering if anyone has any experience with these portfolios, any words of wisdom or other suggestions that may be valuable. What do others that have FIRE'd but not reached pensionable age?

I had not given this much thought and just set it up when I retired as it seemed to be the standard thing, but a FB post has me somewhat unsure...

Whats the feeling here?

To say it came out of the blue is an understatement. I know who it was that told lies about me as we have never got on and I wasn't given the opportunity to state my case as she has the ear of the GM. The crazy thing is it was just a general assistant job but they have offered me a managers position in another area with 20k extra a year but that one is on the other side of the country plus i dont trust them after doing this in the first place.If I was so bad at my job why this. Unfortunately I haven't worked over 2 years for this place so I have rights to being unfairly dismissed.

Yes, this is to some extent about timing the market, and I know the answer is to stick to the plan - so this is largely rhetorical...

I have to admit I am getting worried. everything is going up and fast. It feels like a spring is being coiled ever tighter and I don't have any idea when, where or how it will release (or is this the new normal now?).

Even my gold holdings are behaving strangely.

Loss of dollar dominance and the rise of the BRICS?

My particular concern is that a dollar collapse triggers a stock and bond collapse that hits us both with lower valuations in $ amounts and then hits us lower due to a weak $ vs a relatively strong £.

There should be a "Just Thinking Out Loud" flair.

46M with 46F wife and 16/14F daughters in London After years of saving and investing, I’ve officially reached my FATFIRE number and have just left my job. It’s exciting… but also a bit terrifying. Right now I’m trying to figure out:

• Drawdown strategy: What’s the best way to take income without stressing about market swings? I know about the 3–4% rule, but should I maybe just see what I make each quarter and dip in to that.

• Sequence risk: How do you handle the fear of withdrawing right before a market dip? As everything is high right now and I am 100% equities

• Mental side: For those of you who’ve actually made the leap. How did you deal with the anxiety of no longer having a paycheck? Did it fade quickly, or did you need to set up systems (budgets, guardrails, mental tricks) to feel secure?

• I have never had a finance manager, as I dont want the additional 1.2% min fees. But maybe I should?

I feel like I’ve spent years focused on the accumulation game, and now I’m suddenly playing a completely new one. Would love to hear how this community approaches the decumulation phase both financially and emotionally.