Work through the numbers yourself

Every calculator here is an illustration. It takes the figures you enter, applies the assumptions shown on the page, and does the arithmetic exactly — but arithmetic is the easy part of a financial decision. None of these tools knows your tax position, your liabilities, the stability of your income, or what you would do in a year markets fall thirty per cent.

Projections assume a steady return. Real returns arrive in an order, and the order matters enormously in the years either side of retirement. Where a calculator can mislead, we have tried to say so on the page rather than in the small print.