What actually goes wrong

What it looks like. Markets fall in your first two or three years. You keep drawing the same amount because that was the plan, and the plan felt like a commitment. Each withdrawal sells units at a low price, and those units are gone — they can't take part in the recovery. Three years later markets are fine and you are permanently behind, in a hole that a good decade will not fill.

Why it happens. Not stupidity. It happens because a fixed inflation-adjusted withdrawal sounds like discipline, and because cutting spending feels like admitting the plan has failed. The arithmetic is genuinely counter-intuitive: identical average returns in a different order produce completely different retirements, and only for someone who is withdrawing.

The fix, and it is cheap. A cash buffer so you never have to sell into a fall, and a withdrawal rule decided in advance so the decision isn't yours to make in the moment. Calculator 17 sizes the buffer; calculator 02 puts a number on what flexibility is worth, and it is usually larger than people expect. Both are decisions you make once.

What it looks like. A plan that works beautifully for twenty years meets a care requirement at 84 and empties in four. The annual cost is a large multiple of ordinary living expenses, it inflates faster than everything else, and it arrives at the point when you have the least capacity to do anything about it.

Why it happens. Because it is unpleasant to think about, because the probability feels abstract, and because the worst case is frightening enough that people look away rather than looking properly. But roughly half of people need some paid care, and the honest planning number is not the worst case — it is the probability-weighted cost, which is a far more manageable figure and one you can actually plan around.

The fix. Look at it once, properly, and then stop worrying about it. Calculator 07 gives you the probability-weighted cost, compares insuring against self-funding, and shows how fast the money would go. For most people the honest answer is "the house covers it, and the children inherit less" — which is a decision rather than a catastrophe, and much easier to make now than at 84.

What it looks like. The plan was built to age 85 because that is roughly what the life expectancy tables said. You reach 85 in good health. There is another decade to fund and no obvious way to fund it.

Why it happens. Two mistakes stacked on each other. First, life expectancy is an average, so planning to it means planning for a coin-flip chance of outliving your money. Second, the figure quoted in the news is measured from birth and dragged down by deaths at every age along the way — having already reached your sixties, your expected age at death is meaningfully higher than that headline, and higher again if you are a woman, a non-smoker, or reasonably comfortable.

Longevity also quietly multiplies every other risk on this page: more years of inflation, more chance of meeting a bad market, more chance of needing care.

The fix. Plan to 95, or 100 if longevity runs in your family. Calculator 15 handles this properly by running a survival curve rather than picking one age, so you can see the odds at every age instead of betting on one. Then look at what raises the floor: deferring a state pension is one of the few ways to buy more guaranteed, inflation-linked, lifelong income, and calculator 03 prices it.

What it looks like. On paper you are comfortable. In practice the roof needs replacing, and everything you own is either the house, locked in a pension you can't touch yet, or invested in something that has just fallen 20% and would have to be sold at that price. So you sell it at that price — or you borrow expensively, on retirement income, which is harder and dearer than it was when you had a salary.

Why it happens. Because "what I have" and "what I can reach this month" are different numbers, and almost nobody tracks the second one. It is also the classic aftermath of clearing a mortgage with everything liquid you owned: debt-free, and with no answers.

The fix. Calculator 22 separates what you own from what you can reach and scores the gap. If a mortgage payoff is what's threatening your liquidity, the mortgage guide walks the whole decision — and the answer is very often a partial payoff rather than either extreme. If your holdings are complicated, illiquid or expensive without you being sure why, calculator 16 prices the clutter.

What it looks like. A deposit for one child. Then fairness requires the same for the others. Then something goes wrong for one of them and you help again, because of course you do. Five years later the plan is materially weaker and nobody made a decision — a series of individually reasonable choices arrived somewhere unreasonable.

Why it happens. Because each gift is considered on its own, against a portfolio balance that looks large, and never against the years of your own security it costs. And because saying no to an adult child in genuine difficulty is one of the hardest things a parent does.

The fix. Decide the total in advance, before the first request. Calculator 14 gives you a safe to give figure and — more usefully — translates any gift into cost in security: the years of your own resilience it consumes. It also handles the fairness problem between children, which is the part that causes lasting family damage.

Having a number makes the conversation enormously easier. "We've worked out we can help with £X in total across all of you" is a kind, clear answer. Deciding case by case under emotional pressure is neither.