"I had fun playing with this retirement…"

I had fun playing with this retirement model but in the end got a bit frustrated that the model increases discretionary spend and you can't reduce it without subscribing.
In any case a lot of fun!

"Excellent "second opinion" health check"

I return to this tool once a year or more, mainly to get a second opinion after speaking to my advisor. I get comfort from the "you'll be fine 99.5%" of the time message, as opposed to the more common "we use these three rates of return" you normally get. I like to flick through random scenarios and it's interesting to see how they can vary. Just need to stay alive long enough...

"Its an interesting tool"

Its an interesting tool, but it's quite difficult to determine exactly what the graphs etc are telling you. I guess what most people want to know is given their assests and spending, a good certainty of how much they can spend in retirement and outlive their resources, leaving/not leaving an inheritence. Each time you want to change a key criteria you have to use a "credit" . It really isn't designed to allow you to play with a whole heap of scenarios, without quickly starting to pay for each one.

Also if you make a mistake, it's a credit to correct it and redo the analysis. For example i had inserted my state pension start, but I didn't save it and had to redo the member info and forgot it. So realising it, I put it in again. Cost 1 credit. Analysis still didn't look right and then I realised i'd put in the weekly figure when the system wanted the yearly figure....another credit.

In my case, I told it leaving an inheritance was only 15% important, but each time the median amount left after i die is £400K. if I want to try to lower that % importance and thus increase my annual spending %....it's another credit ! Now I imagine a lot of that is the value of my property which I said not to sell. I guess I should take the property out completely to see what the final inheritance is, but that will another credit !

Also the strategy variables have a mind of their own. for example I set a target taxable income of 39K, but it is now at 2K. Also, when you lock items, they should stay locked, but no after a strategy, they are all unlocked again. Makes it more difficult to just lock or unlock, or change just 1 variable.

"Definitely check this out to plan for your retirement!"

I only have the free version at present. This only gives a high level overview of how our retirement may pan out.

However the insights are still very helpful.

I can see us paying so we get extra functionality and being able to edit the strategies and tweak the settings.

Give the free version a go. You have literally nothing to lose apart from a little time inputting the financial information that the programme needs to do its stuff.

Then if you feel the output is helpful, pay the small annual fee to get a deeper dive into your retirement prospects.

"Really useful tool"

Really useful tool. Had a tech glitch which was pointed out to me rather than the other way around. Have a credit in lieu. Great service.

"Purchased 'Standard' as an individual"

I've bought it as an individual, and I've only used the tool 3 times so far, so probably too early to give an accurate or fair assessment. I was hoping to plug in my numbers and get a projection of what I could spend each year to avoid running out of funds. That's not what you get. You input your planned spend, essential and discretionary, and the legacy you want to leave, and it projects the likelihood of that being successful. In my case, I was left with a huge legacy, even though I'd set the legacy requirement to zero.

It allows you to input figures for yourself and your partner, but be careful to check it has the correct values set for each person before using a credit. Our first credit was wasted. The report generated had somehow copied my partner's birth date across onto my record, so the data generated was garbage.

There appears to be lots of configurable settings, which aren't immediately obvious, so I'm hopeful the projection I'm after is achievable. I'll need to play with it some more. It's just a shame the default projection isn't what, I would guess, most people are probably looking for.

To be fair, at the price point for the 'Standard' or 'Premium' package, I shouldn't complain!

"The best retirement planning tool available"

I have been using this tool for several years as I consider my options in the critical last few years of work before retirement.

My wife and I have quite a complex set of investments and pensions between us and this is all modelled in the tool. We wanted to make sure we were optimising payments into pensions and isas

I have used all of the alternative tools that I can find (and I looked hard) including several saas tools, spreadsheets and the financial planning tools offered by financial organisations. This is by far the best.

I recently paid for a review with a financial advisor. He looked at my plans, based on all the scenarios I had modelled in the tool and told me he couldn’t really give me any better advice. He wasn’t able to find anything we needed to change. He said we didn’t really need his help. He did run us through the commercial software that is available to financial advisors but the results were the same as we had modelled in evolvemyretirement.

I used the tool to figure out that I can retire 2 years earlier than I was previously planning with enough money to really enjoy those extra 2 years.

I have had multiple conversations with Nick and he has been super helpful both in answering questions and in taking feedback on how to improve the tool. The tool now has several enhancements that I asked for.

I intend to keep using this tool as I navigate the transition to retirement over the next few years.

"Well worth it"

Yes - Very good, I used this after we had professional financial advice over the years an after an extensively tweaked and complicated spreadsheet had been endlessly tinkered with by me. What I found is that after some intial understanding had been accomplished the model confirmed our own assumptions which in itself is very useful. Running a new scenario every few months as information becomes available is very useful - worth every penny.

"Nice plan"

Comprehensive planner at a nice price.

"Helps me to feel less anxious…"

This tool helps me to feel less anxious about my future in these increasingly uncertain times. It's a much more balanced, nuanced and rounded view than I get from my financial advisor, and helps me to have more constructive conversations with them.