Money Horizon is a free planner for the whole of your financial life in the UK: what you earn and save, the pension you build, the income it can pay, the tax along the way, and what your family receives at the end. It was built because the free tools available answer one question each — a pension calculator here, an inheritance tax calculator there — and none of them models a couple, joins inheritance tax to the retirement cash-flow, or tests a plan against what UK markets have actually done.
How the engine works
Every answer comes from one year-by-year projection of your household from today to the age you choose:
- Income: earnings until each person stops work, the state pension from state pension age (with deferral), final-salary pensions (revalued in deferment, capped indexation in payment, survivor shares), other income and rent, annuities, and pension withdrawals — either as you plan them or solved to meet an income target.
- Tax: income tax at 2026-27 rates with thresholds frozen to April 2031 and then uprated, the personal-allowance taper, National Insurance, the pension annual allowance with its taper and carry-forward, the money-purchase allowance, tax-free cash, savings and dividend allowances, capital gains on sales.
- Spending: living costs, the mortgage, planned events, gifts, care costs when you test for them; shortfalls are met from cash, then ISAs, then pensions, in the order you choose or the cheapest in tax.
- Growth: each pot at the return of its asset mix (or the figure you enter) less its charges, from a dated capital-market table that today's gilt yields override each weekday.
- The estate: at every age, the estate against the nil-rate bands as they will then stand, with gifts and their clocks, the £2m taper, the charity rate, transferable bands on the second death, business relief, and pensions inside the estate from April 2027 — and what heirs receive after inheritance tax and the income tax on an inherited pension.
- Uncertainty: ten named stress tests, replays of real UK years (1973, 2000, 2008 and the worst start since 1871), and a Monte Carlo that resamples blocks of UK history; a survival curve fitted to ONS life tables turns all of it into "in 85% of futures the money outlives you".
The engine is written as rules-as-data: every threshold, rate and date sits in a rules file with its source, shown in full on the assumptions page inside the planner.
Where the numbers come from
| What | Source |
|---|---|
| Tax and pension rules | HMRC and gov.uk, tax year 2026-27, with the Autumn Budget 2025 changes |
| Inheritance tax | HMRC; Finance Act 2025 for pensions in the estate from 6 April 2027 |
| State pension | gov.uk: full new state pension £12,548 a year, 35 qualifying years, Class 3 voluntary contributions |
| Yields | Bank of England: Bank Rate and 5-, 10- and 20-year gilt par yields, each weekday |
| Inflation | ONS CPI, monthly |
| Mortality | Gompertz curves fitted to ONS national life tables |
| Market history | Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory Database, UK series 1871–2020 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) |
| Living standards | PLSA Retirement Living Standards, 2025 |
| Annuity rates, fund charges, platform pricing | Providers' public rate tables, factsheets and pricing pages, dated on the page |
What stays private
Everything you type stays in your browser. There is no account, no sign-up, no server that sees your figures; the site's security policy blocks it from talking to almost any other address. Your plan is saved in your browser's own storage; share links carry the plan compressed inside the link itself, so only the people you send it to can see it. Market data is a small public file the site fetches from its own address.
The one optional exception is sync between devices, which is off unless you turn it on. When you do, your data is encrypted on your device with a code only you hold, and the encrypted copy — unreadable without the code — is stored so your other devices can fetch it. The code itself is never sent anywhere: both the storage address and the encryption key are derived from it one-way on your device. Turning sync off deletes the stored copy.
What it is not
Money Horizon is a planning indicator, not financial advice. It does not know your full circumstances, cannot replace a regulated adviser, and its figures should not be relied on for any decision. Tax rules change. Where it lists funds, gilts or platforms it shows facts from the providers' own documents, dated, unranked, never a recommendation. For guidance, Pension Wise (through MoneyHelper) is free for the over-50s; for advice, a regulated adviser.
Why Money Horizon exists
Money decisions rarely stand alone. Retiring earlier changes how long your savings need to last. Helping your family today changes what you have for later. Money Horizon brings these choices together, so you can see how one decision affects the rest of your life.
It is a free, independent project with no ties to financial providers and no income from the site. Its purpose is to help you understand your options, ask better questions and feel more prepared for conversations about your money.
Contact
Questions, corrections and suggestions: contact@moneyhorizon.co.uk. If a figure on the site looks wrong, say which page and what you expected — the rules are dated, so it can be checked against the source.