The Fowler Drew Drawdown Planner is a holistic, probabilistic modelling tool for a spending goal. A spending goal, whether for an individual or a couple, involves drawdown if your intention is that the capital will remain invested as you draw down from it, either as income yield or sale proceeds, to meet spending.

So drawdown means your capital doesn’t stop working just because you do.

The Planner is designed to find the best possible balance of resources, time, risk and spending outcomes. What makes it the best is that it meets your needs and wants as you define them.

What the Drawdown Planner will do

• Calculate required savings when you know your spending needs
• Calculate spending outcomes when you know the available resources
• Show you how the answers vary with the approach you take to risk
• Or if you alter the planned dates on your personal time line

It’s a holistic plan because it focuses on total spending from all resources, of which draw from pension accounts may only be a part. Draw sits on top of any guaranteed income, like State Pension and Defined Benefit pensions, and alongside ISAs and other non-pension accounts.

A model, not a calculator

A probabilistic, quantitative model aims to capture the true uncertainty about market returns and future inflation and the consequences of each for the sustainability of spending. That sophistication is what makes it a planner, not a calculator.

A calculator, by contrast, relies on simplifying assumptions with no room for uncertainty:

• Markets earn a standardised annual rate of return, or somebody’s best guess
• Inflation is about the same as it has been recently, or somebody’s guess
• Both follow smooth, linear paths without deviations
• You withdraw money at the same rate every year
• You die on time, with the average longevity for someone your age now

That’s like answering the question ‘what if everything is average?’ But your life hasn’t been average to date and won’t be from now on either. The 50:50 outcome is a toss of the coin and a coin toss isn’t a plan.

Model drawdown answers

Planning with a model is about answering the questions that matter to me and need maximum possible precision:

• What’s the impact of much better or worse markets and inflation over the rest of my life?
• How long will my capital last depending on those outturns?
• And supposing I live a very long time?
• What’s the chance I will have to cut back on my spending? And by how much?
• Supposing I want to spend more money early in retirement?
• What if I need expensive care late in life?
• How will my gross income be taxed and how can I manage the tax rate efficiently?
• When can I safely gift?
• When can I stop working?

Guidance from an adviser

The free-to-use Planner here is designed for your ease of control of the variables. It uses intuitive sliders. You can choose from some stored profiles for spending. Tax is only approximated based on your inputs. The client version, shared between the client and their adviser, is more elaborate, allowing for more granular changes in variables to design the best possible plan.

But even with this free version you can ask to speak to an adviser at any time for help using the Planner. Or to discuss how our services might be appropriate for you.

Your time spent inputting data will not go to waste if you contact us, as you will then be able to upload the data so we can have a better-informed conversation.

Pension Drawdown

Though our Drawdown Planner integrates all sources of income and capital, our wealth management service includes advising on the best use of pension accounts within the plan, based on the tax treatment of ‘pension drawdown’.

Draw from pension accounts will normally use the ‘Flexi Access Drawdown’ (FAD) option but much will depend upon how you choose to deal with tax free cash (Pension Commencement Lump Sum or PCLS).  The strategy may use the Uncrystallised Funds Pension Lump Sum (UFPLS) option.

Read about our pension advice and the pension drawdown framework here.