The Cash flow tab is the Drawdown planner (Pro). It answers one question: in retirement, which pot pays each year, what tax would I pay, and how long does the money last? Tell it the income you want, after tax or before, and from what age, and it illustrates the answer year by year on your own pensions, ISAs, cash and taxable investments. Free accounts see the planner's shape under a lock.
It will not spend a pension before you can. If you stop working before your pension access age, the planner funds those years from what is actually available — ISAs, cash and taxable investments — and leaves pensions alone until you can legally draw them. Your access age is worked out from your date of birth, so anyone turning 55 after 5 April 2028 is held to 57 rather than 55. Money outside a pension still starts the day you stop working, because that genuinely is available.
Plan variants let you save a set-up under a name and compare it against others — how long the money lasts, lifetime tax, what is left at the end and your first-year income. One thing to know: a variant remembers the planner's own settings, including any amount or start age you change on a pension's line in the planner. It does not remember the pensions themselves. Editing a pension on the Pension or Retirement tab changes the figures every variant reads, so they will all move together — which is usually why two variants come back with identical numbers.
What it draws from. Your DC pensions and SIPPs (25% tax-free cash as recorded or on each withdrawal — a pot you have part crystallised keeps only the tax-free cash it has left, not 25% of everything, and its row in the draw order says so), a Lifetime ISA, which sits with your pensions but pays out entirely tax-free from 60 and so is drawn like an ISA rather than taxed as pension income, your ISAs and cash savings (withdrawals tax-free; interest on plain cash taxed above the Personal Savings Allowance), and, since September 2026, your taxable investments: Shares, funds and ETFs, a General Investment Account and crypto. A withdrawal from those realises its share of the gain over what you paid; the £3,000 annual exempt amount is used first each year, then 18% inside the basic-rate limit and 24% above it, stacked on that year's taxable income. Interest on cash outside an ISA is taxed too, and this is the part people are most often surprised by: it is covered first by any unused personal allowance, then the starting rate for savings (up to £5,000 at 0%, shrinking by £1 for every £1 of other income above your personal allowance), then your Personal Savings Allowance. What is left is taxed at your marginal rate, and the tax comes out of the pot rather than being added to your income, so it never changes what you draw. Interest inside a Cash ISA, and Premium Bond prizes, are not taxed at all. Where WealthR does not know what you paid it counts gains from today and says so; type the cost in the what you paid box next to the pot. It also draws from one-off money you have entered — see below. A holding filed as Dividends is placed by the wrapper you gave it. In a Stocks & Shares ISA there is no dividend tax and no capital gains tax, so it is simply drawn with your other ISAs. In a general investment account it is drawn with your other taxable investments, and the dividends it pays are taxed: the first £500 each year is free, and above that they are charged at the dividend rates — 10.75%, 35.75% or 39.35% depending on the band your other income has already reached. Any unused personal allowance covers them first. As with interest, the tax comes out of the pot rather than being added to your income, so it never changes what you draw. A dividend holding whose wrapper is Other, or not set at all, is left out rather than assumed — “Other” could be a bond or a trust, which do not pay out like a general account. Set the wrapper on the holding and it counts. The "What this plan draws from" note at the top lists what is counted and what is left out, by value, and why.
Guaranteed income first. DB pensions, the State Pension, annuities and any PAYE are counted before your pots, each on its own start age. On every line you can set the start age, a growth rate and, new, an amount for this plan only, so a reduced pension from early retirement is one box. A collective DC scheme is tagged "target, not guaranteed".
Still working when the plan starts. If you retire part-way through a year, the plan counts the salary you actually earn up to that point rather than assuming you stopped on 1 January. It takes the figure from your Tax tab and stops it at the end of the month before you finish, so the part-year of work and the first part-year of pension add up to twelve months between them. If you have typed an Employment / PAYE salary income line yourself, that line is used instead and nothing is counted twice. Switching such a line off means “leave this line out”, not “I earn nothing” — the control for stopping work is your retirement date. It charges employee National Insurance on that salary and stops it at your State Pension age, the same as real life. A Self-employment / sole trader profit line is counted too, with Class 4 National Insurance on the profit rather than Class 1 — a lower main rate, 6% instead of 8% between the same two thresholds — and it stops at your State Pension age in the same way.
Income from your own business. Dividends you pay yourself from your own limited company go in as a Company dividends income line. They are charged at dividend rates with the dividend allowance, the same as on the Tax tab, and they count as money arriving — so the plan draws less from your pots in the years you take them. They are deliberately not treated like dividends from a tracked holding, where the projection is already growing the capital that pays them. Sole-trader profit has its own line, with income tax and Class 4 National Insurance.
Tax-free cash is capped by your Lump Sum Allowance. The plan will not hand out more tax-free pension cash than the allowance allows, and it counts a scheme lump sum you have already recorded as part of what is used. The allowance is a fixed cash sum that does not grow, so the further out the plan runs, the more often it is the thing that binds. ISA and general-account money is not affected — that is tax-free for reasons of its own.
What the You and partner views change. On a household plan the You and partner views split the assets but not the spending target, because nothing records whose share of the household spending is whose. The partner view also leaves one-off money in and out of the plan, since no owner is recorded against those either. The household view is the one that counts everything.
Which pots, in what order. Pots are drawn top first, one until it is empty, then the next. Your pensions and your taxable investments — Shares, funds and ETFs, a General Investment Account, crypto — come first, in the order you put them in. ISAs and cash start after those, and that catches people out: if you hold Shares outside an ISA, the money comes out of those before it touches your ISA. That is why the wrapper matters — a withdrawal from a taxable account realises its share of the gain and can carry capital gains tax, while an ISA withdrawal never does. After ISAs and cash comes any one-off money (a pension’s tax-free cash, or an inheritance or other one-off you have entered), which is held until you need it, and last of all any reinvested surplus. Every one of those lines can be moved, the ISAs, cash and Premium Bonds included — use the arrows beside each row. They used to be fixed at the end; that was a default, not a rule. Only one-off money and the reinvested surplus still sit behind the lot and have no arrows, because each arrives partway through the plan rather than being money you hold today. We take no view on which order is right for you: it is yours to set and to compare. You can also cap a pot's yearly draw, or set its growth.
Three ways to build the illustration. A spending goal draws whatever it takes, in your order, until the target is met. A tax-threshold illustration draws from your pensions up to a level of taxable income and stops there — it never touches an ISA, so it is a way of comparing tax rather than a plan that funds your spending. Fill a tax band, then top up is the two combined: your pensions are drawn only up to the band you set, the rest of the year’s spending comes from everything else in your order, and if that runs out the pensions carry the difference rather than the plan reporting a shortfall. Nothing extra is drawn just to reach the band, and a cap you have set on a pot still applies — a figure you typed is not overridden to avoid a shortfall. Which of the three suits you is yours to decide; we take no view, and any of them can be saved as a variant and compared side by side. The results show how long the money lasts, the illustrated lifetime tax (with the capital gains share named), what is left at the end, and a year-by-year table with every year's draws.
One-off money in and out. A one-off you record under Life events on the Net worth tab — an inheritance, a house sale, a new car, helping a child with a deposit — counts here as well as in your Forecast, so the two show the same money. Money coming in arrives in the year you set, is held alongside your ISAs until you need it, and is drawn after them. Money going out is added to that year’s spending and drawn like any other need, so it carries whatever tax that withdrawal attracts — taking £45,000 in hand out of a pension costs more than £45,000. One exception: the tax-threshold illustration draws up to a tax band rather than to a spending target, so it does not fund a one-off cost at all, and says so on the year it falls in. A one-off you have switched off, or recorded as already arrived, is not counted — once the money is in your figures, counting it again would count it twice.
Plan variants. Save the planner's current set-up under a name, up to ten, change something and save that too. The table compares them against your live settings on lasts-until, lifetime tax, what is left and year-one income; Apply puts one back on the planner. Every variant runs through the same engine, so the figures match exactly.
Today's money and fiscal drag. Figures show in today's money by default (switch to future pounds in Advanced). Tax thresholds are held at today's values until the freeze year, then rise with inflation; you can hold them frozen throughout. Income above your target is reinvested into a sleeve that compounds and is drawn last, so the planner lines up with your net-worth chart.
Same engine as the Strategy Lab. The Drawdown Strategy Lab on the Pension tab compares spend-down orders for one person using this planner's engine and settings, so the planner's order shows the same lifetime tax on both tabs.
This is your retirement income vs spend. For your current month-to-month income vs bills, that's the Budget tab.