Hundred SummersCouples retirement calculator: can we both retire when we want?
Two ages, two pensions, two State Pensions and what you'd spend together, run year by year through the same engine as the full plan, and what the one left would have if either of you died first. Your figures never leave your browser.
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Worked example
Computed when this page was built by the same engine that runs the calculator above, so the figures below and the live tool can never disagree. Change any input above to see your own.
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| You | 55, retiring at 62, £350,000 in pensions, £60,000 saved |
| Your partner | 53, retiring at 60, £90,000 in pensions, £20,000 saved |
| Spending together | £40,000 a year |
| Growth | 5.0% |
| Results | |
|---|---|
| Spending covered | To 95 and 93 |
| Left between you at the end | £281,764 |
| If you die at 80 | Your partner is covered, £469,731 left |
| If your partner dies at 80 | You're covered, £648,506 left |
The next question
What would the survivor keep from a pension? →Inherited pension calculator
Or answer it with everything else: the full Hundred Summers plan connects your pay, pensions, savings, property, tax and spending year by year, and stress-tests them across 500 simulated market histories.
Read the guide
- Drawing retirement income as a couple: the coordination dividend →Two personal allowances, two basic-rate bands, tax-free transfers between spouses: why the same household income can cost thousands less when drawn as a couple, and how Hundred Summers computes the split.
Why a couple is two plans, not one
UK income tax is charged on each person separately, so a couple has two personal allowances and two basic-rate bands. A plan that adds your pots together and draws from one pile gets the tax wrong. This calculator runs each of you as your own plan, with your own State Pension age and pension access age, and once you are both retired takes your joint spending the cheapest way across the two of you: drawing first from whoever still has a personal allowance or a basic-rate band to use, with money moved between you tax-free, as married couples and civil partners can.
The question couples don't ask: what if one of us dies?
The survivor usually inherits the pension pots and savings, and nothing is taxed between spouses. But the deceased's State Pension stops, and the household's spending doesn't halve: one person living alone spends around 72% of what a couple does. The calculator tests each of you dying at an age you pick and shows whether the one left is still covered. Unmarried partners can face inheritance tax on the first death and get no tax-free transfers between them, and it shows that too.
Sources
- Pensions UK, Retirement Living Standards.
- GOV.UK, The new State Pension: what you'll get.
- GOV.UK, Marriage Allowance and Inheritance Tax (spouses and civil partners).