https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html User-facing releases of the Hundred Summers UK lifetime financial planning app, newest first. en-gb Fri, 23 Oct 2026 22:20:36 GMT https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-debts-paid-off-on-the-timeline https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-debts-paid-off-on-the-timeline Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The life event timeline on the Goals tab now marks every year a debt is cleared: each mortgage, loan and card your plan pays off, and a student loan repaid or written off. The ages are the same ones the Liabilities tab gives. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-page-titles-without-the-profile-name https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-page-titles-without-the-profile-name Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Each page's title is now just the page. The open profile is named once, in the profile button at the top right. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-what-would-make-an-earlier-retirement-last https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-what-would-make-an-earlier-retirement-last Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT In the When could I retire? table on the Goals tab, any age where your spending runs short now says what would fix it: how much less to spend each year until then, or the usually smaller amount to pay into your pension instead. It replaces the separate To retire at box, so every retirement-age answer is in one place. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-a-simpler-what-would-it-take https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-a-simpler-what-would-it-take Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Check these at 85% market confidence button is gone from Plan insights on the Goals tab. The When could I retire? table beside it already gives each retirement age's stress-test success rate, and the AI Copilot can still work out the earliest age and the most you could spend at 85% confidence. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-a-liabilities-tab https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-a-liabilities-tab Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Every debt in one place, after Property in the menu: a chart of what each mortgage, loan and card owes year by year, what you owe today, this year's repayments, the interest over the whole plan and the age you're debt-free, and each debt's rate, payment, balance at retirement and the age it clears. A student loan has its own card, as it isn't counted in net worth. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-when-could-i-retire-runs-by-itself https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-when-could-i-retire-runs-by-itself Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT On the Goals tab, the When could I retire? table in Plan insights now fills in as soon as you open the tab, row by row in the background, with no button to press. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-net-worth-first-in-the-menu https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-net-worth-first-in-the-menu Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Net worth is back at the top of the menu, with Goals second. The app still opens on Goals. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-crossover-points-on-the-timeline https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-crossover-points-on-the-timeline Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The three crossover points, when your money out-earns you, when compounding takes over and when your investments become self-sustaining, are now entries of their own on the Goals timeline, at the age your plan reaches each, rather than inside Regular FI. Open one to see what it means for your plan. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-goals-life-goals-on-the-timeline-what-would-it-take-in-plan- https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-goals-life-goals-on-the-timeline-what-would-it-take-in-plan- Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Your life goals now live on the Goals tab's life event timeline: open one to see its stage of life and any cost, and a goal you've costed opens under its expense event, beside whether the plan funds it. What would it take? and When could I retire? are now sections of Plan insights, at the foot of the page. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-change-log-under-profiles https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-change-log-under-profiles Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The change log, every change made to the open plan on this device, is now under Settings → Profiles, beside the profiles themselves, rather than under Help and guides. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-your-profiles-one-click-away https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-your-profiles-one-click-away Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT On a computer, the top-right corner now shows your name instead of a cog. Click it to switch between profiles, add a new one or delete one (it asks first, since a deleted plan can only come back from a backup), and Settings is at the bottom of the same menu. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-methodology-moves-to-settings https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-methodology-moves-to-settings Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Methodology & assumptions, where every assumption behind your figures is set out and the plan assumptions can be changed, now opens from the Settings menu rather than the tab menu. The Education, not advice link at the top of every page still goes straight there. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-profiles-and-storage-each-in-settings https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-profiles-and-storage-each-in-settings Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Settings now starts with Profiles: your plans, adding one and the example profiles. Where your plan is kept, its plan file and backups, has its own page, Storage, next in the menu. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-projections-and-the-master-chart-each-with-its-own-tab https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-projections-and-the-master-chart-each-with-its-own-tab Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Report tab is now two tabs in the menu: Projections, the year-by-year table, and Master chart, where you overlay any of your plan's datasets and save views for your PDF report. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-plan-snapshots-have-moved-to-settings https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-plan-snapshots-have-moved-to-settings Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Plan snapshots, the dated, fingerprinted records of your plan you can lock and compare, now live in Settings → Plan snapshots, beside Exports. Its line in the Settings menu tells you when a review is due or your plan has moved since you locked it. The Report tab keeps the year-by-year table and the master chart. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-exports-have-moved-to-settings https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-exports-have-moved-to-settings Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The PDF report, the Excel workbook and the calendar dates now live in Settings → Exports, each on a page of its own that says what it includes. The Report tab keeps the year-by-year table, the master chart and your plan snapshots. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-each-fi-stage-explains-itself https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-each-fi-stage-explains-itself Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Each financial independence entry on the Goals timeline now opens its own explanation: Lean, Regular and Fat FI each say what the figure is and when your plan reaches it, Coast FI and Barista FI explain their own tests, and Regular FI also carries the crossover points and the 3.5% rule. They're marked Reached, Projected or Not reached, as milestones rather than funding verdicts. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-each-fi-stage-on-the-timeline https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-each-fi-stage-on-the-timeline Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Financial independence now shows each stage as its own entry on the Goals timeline, at the age your plan reaches it: Lean FI, Regular FI and Fat FI (each with the amount invested it takes, in today's money), Coast FI if you've already got there, and Barista FI from the age half-time work would still fund your plan. Open the first one for the full explanation. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-hundred-summers-opens-on-goals https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-hundred-summers-opens-on-goals Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The app now opens on Goals, the first tab in the menu: how often your plan works, then every event ahead with its funding check. Net worth is one tab down. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-funding-checks-open-from-the-timeline https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-funding-checks-open-from-the-timeline Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT On the Goals tab, each funding check now lives with its event. The events under the life event timeline are listed one per row, and any with a check shows Funded or At risk: open it to see why, how often it holds across the market simulations, where the money comes from, and what would fix it if it falls short. Retirement carries the retire-at-your-age and guaranteed-income checks, the end of the plan carries whether the money lasts and how it copes with a longer life, each big expense its own check, and financial independence has its own row at the age it's projected. The separate cards have gone. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-less-repetition-on-cashflow-and-savings https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-less-repetition-on-cashflow-and-savings Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The list of life events under the Cashflow chart has gone: they're all on the Goals tab's life event timeline. On Savings & Investments, the card for each account has gone too: the summary table already shows each account's value, share, growth rate, contribution and value at retirement, and now also its asset class, how quickly it can be accessed, and which account receives each year's leftover cash. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-one-timeline-on-goals https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-one-timeline-on-goals Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Goals tab now has one timeline. The separate strip above your financial goals has gone: everything it showed is on the life event timeline, which now includes your life goals too (in pink). The goal cards still say whether each goal is funded, and a life goal set after the age you might expect to stay in good health still says so on its card. Goals is also now listed before Net worth in the menu. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-the-reality-check-leads-the-goals-tab https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-the-reality-check-leads-the-goals-tab Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Goals now opens with the reality check, how often your plan pays for everything across hundreds of simulated markets, then the life event timeline and your goals. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-plan-insights-moves-to-goals https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-23-plan-insights-moves-to-goals Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Plan insights, what your projection already knows (cash losing to inflation, years of unused ISA allowance, what your charges add up to, what one more year of work would add), now sits under your goals on the Goals tab, rather than on Cashflow. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-charts-first https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-charts-first Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pages with a chart over time now open with it, and the figures and cards follow: Net worth starts with net worth over time, Goals with the life event timeline, Savings and Pensions with their projected growth, Tax with tax year by year, Inheritance with the IHT liability over time, the Stress Test with the range of simulated outcomes, and Couples with the combined charts. Cashflow and What If already did. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-the-reality-check-opens-the-goals-tab https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-the-reality-check-opens-the-goals-tab Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The reality check, how often your plan pays for everything across hundreds of simulated markets, has moved from Net worth to the top of Goals, just above the goals it judges. Net worth now shows what you own and owe, today, at retirement and across your life. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-investment-bonds-modelled-policy-by-policy https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-investment-bonds-modelled-policy-by-policy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Onshore and offshore bonds now take their policy history: when the bond started, premiums added later, the number of segments, withdrawals already taken and gains already taxed. The 5% tax-deferred allowance runs for 20 years from each premium, and allowances you haven't used carry into the plan. For a bond with segments you choose how the plan takes money: across all segments (tax-deferred up to the 5% allowance), the allowance first and then whole segments, or whole segments only, where the gain is just those segments' real growth. Gains are top-sliced over the right period: the years since the last excess, or since the bond began for segments you cash in. The bond shows the allowance free to use this year. Withdrawals made to pay one-off costs or the year's tax are now taxed like any other. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-growth-before-or-after-charges-and-clearer-ages-and-illustra https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-growth-before-or-after-charges-and-clearer-ages-and-illustra Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Plan assumptions (on Methodology) now asks whether the growth rates you enter are before or after charges. Choose after charges and a 4% assumption is used as 4%, with each holding's charges still shown. The Longevity tab's ages now say when each phase starts, with the ages of each phase spelled out (Freedom: ages 60 to 74), so it's clear that spending changes in the year you choose. The PCLS comparison, the drawdown-blend figures and the bucket example on Pension Income are labelled as simplified illustrations with their own fixed assumptions. And in the exports, the Excel Assets sheet shows every pension's growth rate and the rate the plan uses after charges, and the methodology no longer says savings are drawn most-liquid-first when you have set your own order. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-your-investment-risk-is-on-the-risk-tab https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-your-investment-risk-is-on-the-risk-tab Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Investment portfolio and risk, which shows how much market risk your savings, investments and pensions carry overall and how they're split between equities, bonds, cash and mixed funds, has moved from Net worth to the top of the Risk tab, where it sits with your attitude to risk and capacity for loss. Everyone can see it there, with or without Premium. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-net-worth-and-goals-each-with-its-own-tab https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-net-worth-and-goals-each-with-its-own-tab Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Overview tab is now two. Net worth shows what you own and owe today, how your net worth moves across your life, what you have at retirement and how your investments are spread. Goals, the new tab beside it, holds your financial goals and life events: the goal timeline, whether your plan pays for each goal and where the money comes from, your life goals, What would it take?, the retirement-age table and your one-off costs and windfalls. Nothing about your plan has changed, only where it's shown. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-the-voice-guide-builds-on-your-plan https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-the-voice-guide-builds-on-your-plan Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The voice guide no longer starts from scratch. Open it on a plan you've already filled in and it starts from what's there: it asks what you'd like the plan to help with, then only what's missing, such as the home you're thinking of buying, not your age again. The checking list shows what came from your plan, and only what you told it or changed is written back; everything else stays exactly as it is, and Ctrl+Z (⌘Z) undoes it. Figures spread across several items, like three pensions or itemised spending, are shown but changed under Your Facts. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-a-better-voice-for-the-voice-guide https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-a-better-voice-for-the-voice-guide Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The voice guide now picks the most natural-sounding British voice your device has, rather than the first one it finds, which was often an old robotic one. It reads sentence by sentence, which sounds more natural, and says amounts as pounds. While it's reading aloud, the new Voice button lets you choose another voice and a speed (slower, normal or faster), and your choice is remembered. The voices come from your device and browser: Microsoft Edge's "Natural" voices and Chrome's Google voices sound the most lifelike. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-the-voice-guide-s-microphone-works https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-the-voice-guide-s-microphone-works Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tapping the microphone in the voice guide did nothing: the site's own security settings were blocking the microphone. It now listens as it should (your browser asks once for permission). And if speaking can't work, because the microphone is blocked, missing, or the browser's speech service can't be reached, the guide now says so and how to fix it, instead of staying silent. Typing your answers works as before. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-the-voice-guide-one-click-away https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-the-voice-guide-one-click-away Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT On a computer, the planning guide now has its own Voice guide button in the top bar, beside the AI Copilot, so you can talk a new plan through (or type it) from any screen. It sets up the new plan beside your current one, so nothing you've already entered changes. On a phone it's under Settings → Help and guides. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-tidier-settings https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-22-tidier-settings Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Settings now open on a short menu rather than one long page: Screen settings (light or dark, text size, money terms and explanations), Profiles and backups, Your adviser, Help and guides, and Account. Each opens its own page, with a back arrow to the menu. On a computer the settings cog has moved to the right-hand end of the top bar, and the Your facts button there has gone: Your Facts is in the menu on the left, and the Your Facts strip on the right edge still opens it beside any tab. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-21-a-simpler-menu-on-a-computer https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-21-a-simpler-menu-on-a-computer Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT On a computer the menu now always sits beside the page, and the ☰ button switches it between icons only, which leaves the page more room, and icons with their names. The pin and close buttons are gone. Hover over an icon to see which tab it opens. Your choice is remembered on that device. On a phone the menu still opens from ☰ over the page. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-21-set-up-your-plan-by-talking-it-through https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-21-set-up-your-plan-by-talking-it-through Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new planning guide sets up your plan in conversation. It asks what you'd like your plan to help with, such as when you can retire, buying a home or leaving money to your family, then about fifteen short questions about your money, and only the ones that apply to you. You can type your answers or, in browsers that can, speak them, and it can read its questions aloud. Rough figures are fine ("about 180k", "£2,500 a month", "fifty five thousand"), and if you're not sure it uses a stated starting figure and tells you which. It reads back what it understood, lists everything it will set so you can change any of it, builds your plan, then shows you round the screens that answer your goals, starting with whether your spending is covered. It works on your device: your answers aren't sent to us or to an AI. It's the first thing new members see, with the short form one click away, and you can start it again any time from Settings to set up a new plan beside your current one. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-20-tax-free-cash-as-a-list-of-withdrawals https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-20-tax-free-cash-as-a-list-of-withdrawals Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Tax-free cash on the Pension Income tab is now a list you add to and remove from. Each withdrawal takes cash from the pension you choose, at the age you choose: the most it can pay tax-free, a share of the pension's projected value, or an amount. A share or an amount uses only the part of the pension it needs (partial crystallisation), so the rest of that pension keeps a quarter of each later withdrawal tax-free. Under the list, a running total shows how much of your £268,275 Lump Sum Allowance each withdrawal uses and what is left. If a withdrawal asks for more than can be paid tax-free, because it is above 25% or the allowance has run out, it is still paid, but the card warns you that the extra is taxed as income, and your plan charges that tax. Withdrawals use the allowance in order, by age and then as listed. Plans set up before are shown as the list they amount to and project as before until you change the list. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-20-tax-free-cash-shown-from-your-pensions-future-values https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-20-tax-free-cash-shown-from-your-pensions-future-values Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Each pension's tax-free cash on the Pension Income tab now shows what your plan actually takes: the pension's projected value at the age you chose, the lump sum, and its percentage of that value. The lump sum was always worked out from the projected value, but the panel showed today's value beside "25%", which suggested otherwise. When a pension pays less than 25%, it now says why: usually because your £268,275 Lump Sum Allowance runs out, which is shared across pensions taking their lump sums in the same year. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-20-tax-free-cash-one-setting-per-pension https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-20-tax-free-cash-one-setting-per-pension Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The tax-free cash card on the Pension Income tab had two ways to set the same thing: one lump sum for the whole plan, with its own age and amount, and a choice for each pension. They could look as if they disagreed. Now there is just one: for each pension, take a tax-free lump sum, at the age and of the amount you choose, or none. Under it, the card shows what your plan then takes, at each age, from its projection. Plans set up the old way are shown pension by pension and project exactly as before, figure for figure. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-20-choose-your-tax-free-cash-in-one-place https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-20-choose-your-tax-free-cash-in-one-place Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The choice of where your tax-free cash comes from has moved from the Pensions tab to the lump-sum card on the Pension Income tab, beside the rest of your tax-free cash settings. A new box, Where the tax-free cash comes from, lists each pension: share the plan's lump sum, take its own at an age of its own, or take none. For its own lump sum you choose the amount: the standard 25%, a set amount up to 25%, or a protected entitlement if your scheme gives one, the only way to go above 25%. It also fits properly on a phone screen now. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-tax-free-cash-pension-by-pension https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-tax-free-cash-pension-by-pension Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Each pension on the Pensions tab now has its own tax-free cash setting. Follow the plan, as before; take this pension's lump sum at an age of its own, at 25% or at a higher share or fixed amount if your scheme protects one; or take none as a lump sum, so a quarter of each withdrawal from it stays tax-free. Your plan now tracks each pension separately, so after one pays its lump sum its withdrawals are fully taxable while the others keep their tax-free quarter, and the tax-free part of any withdrawal follows the pensions it actually comes from. Every lump sum is still capped by what's left of your £268,275 Lump Sum Allowance. Your key-dates calendar includes each pension's own date. Thank you to the member who suggested it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-hold-your-spending-in-pounds-for-a-while https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-hold-your-spending-in-pounds-for-a-while Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Your spending used to rise with inflation every year of the plan. On Your Facts → Expenses, a new section, How your spending rises, lets you set periods where it doesn't: hold it in pounds between two ages (say £30,000 a year, not increased, from 60 to 70) or raise it at a rate of your own, with inflation taking over again afterwards. It applies to working and retirement spending alike; care costs keep their own care inflation. The stress test follows the same periods on every simulated path, so a period held in pounds stays held whatever inflation does. Thank you to the member who suggested it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-see-what-each-account-paid-out-in-the-excel-export https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-see-what-each-account-paid-out-in-the-excel-export Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Excel export's Accounts Detail sheet now shows, beside each account's and pension's balance, what it paid out in withdrawals each year, so you can follow your chosen withdrawal order and reserves account by account. The figures add up to the savings and pension withdrawals on the Projections sheet. Accounts that appear part-way through the plan, such as the cash from a tax-free lump sum, now sit under their own heading; before, they could shift the columns beside them. Thank you to the member who asked for it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-choose-which-account-pays-and-keep-some-in-reserve https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-choose-which-account-pays-and-keep-some-in-reserve Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT On the Pension Income tab, a new card lets you choose which account pays inside each group. Your drawdown strategy still decides how much comes from savings and how much from pensions each year. Savings can now be drawn in your own order instead of most accessible first. Pensions can be used up one at a time in your order, rather than all a little each year in proportion to their size. And any account or pension can be marked as a reserve: the plan leaves it alone until everything else, savings and pensions alike, has been used, and spends it only before your spending would otherwise go unpaid. A pension drawn from reserve is taxed like any other pension withdrawal. The stress test runs the same settings on every simulated path, and the PDF and Excel reports say what you chose. Thank you to the member who asked for it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-set-a-pension-s-growth-apart-from-its-risk https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-set-a-pension-s-growth-apart-from-its-risk Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Each pension on the Pensions tab now has a Growth box beside its risk profile. Leave it blank and the pot grows at the profile's rate, as before. Enter your own expected growth and that changes the return only: the profile still sets how much of the pot is in shares, which is what the stress test's ups and downs follow. So you can keep a pot's risk where it is while using a more cautious, or more hopeful, return than the profile's. Thank you to the member who suggested it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-for-developers-the-engine-as-an-api-proof-of-concept https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-19-for-developers-the-engine-as-an-api-proof-of-concept Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The engine behind every Hundred Summers figure can now be used by other software. A business we've agreed it with sends a plan and gets back the year-by-year UK projection the app would show (income tax including Scotland, National Insurance, pensions and tax-free cash, ISAs, the State Pension, property, debts and inheritance tax), with every assumption used and a fingerprint of the engine, so any answer can be reproduced. Nothing sent is stored, and it's separate from the app: your plan stays on your device. It's a proof of concept, included in the Adviser plan (a key on request) so a firm's own systems can run plans through the same engine, and open to a few other design partners; the documentation, with a worked example the engine recalculates whenever the site is built, is at /api.html. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-18-clearer-next-step-after-you-sign-up https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-18-clearer-next-step-after-you-sign-up Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Once you create an account, the sign-in screen now shows a clear note: check your inbox for the confirmation link we've just sent, with the address it went to, then sign in. If it hasn't arrived after a few minutes, look in your spam or junk folder (or Gmail's Promotions tab); it comes from noreply@hundredsummers.co.uk. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-18-the-menu-stays-open-on-a-computer https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-18-the-menu-stays-open-on-a-computer Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT On a computer screen, the menu now starts pinned open down the left side, so every tab is one click away and the page sits beside it; the menu, settings and logo buttons move to the top of the menu rather than appearing twice. Click the pin or the × to put it away; your choice is remembered on that device. On a phone or a narrower tablet window the menu still opens from ☰ over the page. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-crossover-points-fixed-for-today-s https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-crossover-points-fixed-for-today-s Sat, 17 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT With figures shown in today's money (Today's £), the crossover points on the Overview could appear far too early, with spending shown lower than you'd entered: the investment growth was compared in future pounds against spending in today's money. They now give the same answer whichever way you view the figures. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-self-sustaining-now-counts-the-tax-on-what-you-draw https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-self-sustaining-now-counts-the-tax-on-what-you-draw Sat, 17 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The self-sustaining crossover point now compares your investments' growth after inflation with the larger of your spending and what your plan actually takes out of your pensions and savings that year, including the income tax on pension withdrawals. Spending from savings is largely tax-free, but once your pensions fund it, part of each withdrawal is tax, so the old test could look better than it was. The goal now also says what your plan draws that year, and the age at which the point stops holding, if it does. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-crossover-points-on-the-net-worth-chart https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-crossover-points-on-the-net-worth-chart Sat, 17 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The three crossover points now appear as numbered markers on the Net worth over time chart: ① when your money out-earns you, ② when compounding takes over and ③ when your investments become self-sustaining after inflation, with a key under the chart giving each age. A point you've already passed is listed in the key as already reached. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-three-crossover-points-on-the-road-to-financial-independence https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-three-crossover-points-on-the-road-to-financial-independence Sat, 17 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The financial independence goal on the Overview tab now shows three crossover points, read from your own projection year by year. Your money out-earns you: the first year your pensions and investments grow by more than you're paid. Compounding takes over: the first year that growth outpaces everything you and your employer pay in. And self-sustaining: the first year your investments earn more than you spend, after inflation, so that on your assumptions they would not run down. It also says whether that last one holds every year after, because spending can rise later in life and drawing on the pot shrinks it. All in today's money, alongside the Lean, Regular, Fat, Coast and Barista FI milestones. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-net-worth-over-time-one-asset-class-at-a-time https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-17-net-worth-over-time-one-asset-class-at-a-time Sat, 17 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Net worth over time chart on the Overview tab has a new Show filter: All, Property, Savings and investments, Pensions or Liabilities. Pick one and the chart shows only that class, as a single line, a single area, or (in the detailed breakdown) each property, pension pot, account or debt within it, so you can see how each part of your wealth grows and is drawn down through retirement. The net worth line is hidden while a class is chosen, because it counts every class; choose All to bring it back. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-the-best-figure-in-each-column-marked https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-the-best-figure-in-each-column-marked Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT On the Pension Income tab, Search the combinations now marks the best figure in each column: the most you could spend, the most left for your heirs and the least lifetime tax. Heirs and tax are compared only among combinations that cover your planned spending, because one that runs short spends less and so pays less tax. You can now also sort by least lifetime tax. Each column is one measure, so no single combination is marked as the answer. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-your-retirement-spending-is-a-base https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-your-retirement-spending-is-a-base Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Under the retirement spending on the Your Facts → Expenses tab there's now a note saying what your plan adds to it, with your own figures: the extra you've set for your Freedom years and the ages it runs between, and the care cost in Later Life and when it starts, both from the Longevity tab and both in today's money. The figure you type in is the base; in those years your projection spends more. Thank you to the user who suggested it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-contractors-inside-or-outside-ir35 https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-contractors-inside-or-outside-ir35 Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new free contractor calculator shows what you keep from a day rate inside IR35, paid through an umbrella company, and outside it, through your own limited company, line by line: the umbrella's margin, employer National Insurance and the apprenticeship levy that come out of your rate inside; the salary, corporation tax and dividends outside. On £500 a day for 220 days you'd keep about £65,650 inside and £69,200 outside. Add a permanent salary to see the three side by side. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-three-calculators-answer-one-more-question-each https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-three-calculators-answer-one-more-question-each Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The emergency fund calculator now answers "how long could I cope?": if your pay stopped tomorrow, how many months your cash would cover your essentials, counting any redundancy or notice pay, income that would carry on (a partner's pay, benefits, an insurance payout) and, if you were ill, Statutory Sick Pay for its 28 weeks. The ISA vs pension calculator takes an employer match: what your employer adds when you pay into the pension, which the ISA route gives up. And the savings growth calculator shows a range, what your saving reaches if the rate averages 1.5 points lower or higher, because cash rates follow the Bank Rate. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-can-we-both-retire-when-we-want https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-can-we-both-retire-when-we-want Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new free couples retirement calculator takes two ages, two retirement dates, two sets of pensions and savings, two State Pensions and what you'd spend together, and runs each of you through the same engine as the full plan, because tax is charged per person. Once you're both retired, a married couple's withdrawals are taken the cheapest way across the two of you, with money moved between you tax-free. It then tests what happens if either of you dies first: whether the one left can still cover their spending (around 72% of a couple's) to the end of the plan. Building it showed that the Couples tab's coordinated-drawdown what-if could leave one partner short while the other still had plenty, once the first partner's pension ran out; that's fixed, so the household now draws on both partners' money before it runs short. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-the-ai-copilot-now-sees-your-state-pension-correctly https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-the-ai-copilot-now-sees-your-state-pension-correctly Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT If you gave your National Insurance record (qualifying years) rather than a State Pension forecast amount, the AI Copilot was told your State Pension was £0, even though your projection was paying one worked out from your record. Your figures were right throughout; the Copilot's summary of them wasn't. It now gets the State Pension your plan actually models, how it was worked out (years so far, years still to work, any gaps before State Pension age), and the current full rate, £12,548 a year for 2026/27. Your gov.uk forecast remains the authority, especially if you were ever contracted out. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-benefits-and-allowances-people-miss https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-benefits-and-allowances-people-miss Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new guide names the help most often left unclaimed, with this year's rates from gov.uk: Pension Credit (and the Housing Benefit, council tax help, Warm Home Discount and free TV licence it unlocks), Attendance Allowance, which isn't means-tested, Carer's Allowance, Marriage Allowance and Council Tax Reduction. It says roughly who each is for and points to the free, independent calculators gov.uk recommends for checking your own entitlement. It's a signpost, not a checker: the rules turn on details only a full check can see. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-who-inherits-if-there-is-no-will https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-who-inherits-if-there-is-no-will Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new free calculator applies the intestacy rules: who inherits, and how much, when someone dies without a will. In England and Wales a husband, wife or civil partner with children takes the personal possessions, the first £322,000 and half of the rest, and the children share the other half; without a spouse the estate goes to the nearest relatives in a fixed order, and to the Crown if there are none. Northern Ireland's rules (£250,000 or £450,000) are calculated too, and Scotland's prior and legal rights are explained. It also says plainly what the rules leave out: an unmarried partner inherits nothing, however long you lived together. The fixed sums are now checked daily against gov.uk with the rest of our published figures. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-is-my-tax-code-right https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-is-my-tax-code-right Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new free tax code checker reads any PAYE code (1257L, K codes, BR, D0, 0T, NT, the S and C for Scotland and Wales, and emergency codes ending W1, M1 or X) and says what it tells your employer to do. Enter your pay from the job and it shows the tax the code takes in a year against the tax you'd owe if that job is your only income, and roughly how much has been over- or under-collected so far: £30,000 taxed on BR instead of 1257L means about £2,514 too much a year, £1,257 after six months. It also explains when a different code is right, such as a second job, a company car or untaxed income, and where to check yours. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-what-investing-outside-an-isa-costs-in-tax https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-what-investing-outside-an-isa-costs-in-tax Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new free calculator compares the same investments in a stocks and shares ISA and in an ordinary investment account. Outside an ISA, dividends above £500 a year are taxed at 10.75%, 35.75% or 39.35%, and gains above £3,000 at 18% or 24% when you sell; inside, neither. It shows both taxes year by year to the sale, so you can see what the ISA keeps: on £20,000 now and £500 a month for 20 years, about £30,700 for a basic-rate taxpayer. If you invest more than the £20,000 allowance, it moves the rest into the ISA as each new allowance arrives (Bed and ISA), taxing the sale where it should, and it can show what using the £3,000 gains allowance every year saves. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-every-way-of-taking-your-pension-side-by-side https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-every-way-of-taking-your-pension-side-by-side Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Three choices shape retirement income and they interact: the order you draw from your savings and your pensions, whether you take the tax-free quarter as a lump sum or a bit at a time, and how much of your pots, if any, buys an annuity. The Pension Income tab has a new Search the combinations card that runs every combination (up to 18) through your full plan and shows what each does: the most you could spend a year in retirement with every year covered, whether your planned spending is covered, what would be left for your heirs after inheritance tax, and the tax you'd pay over your lifetime. Sort by the most you could spend or the most left for heirs; the row for your current settings is marked, and any row opens in What If, where you can stress-test it. It shows effects, not a recommendation: a single projection can't put a value on an annuity's guarantee for life or the flexibility drawdown keeps. The AI Copilot can run the same search when you ask how best to take your pension income. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-your-plan-s-dates-in-your-calendar https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-your-plan-s-dates-in-your-calendar Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Report tab has a new button: Add key dates to my calendar. It downloads a small calendar file, made on your device, that any calendar app can open (Apple, Google, Outlook). It holds the dates your plan turns on: the end of each tax year on 5 April, with that year's ISA, pension and capital gains allowances; a yearly reminder to review your plan; the years you reach your retirement age, the minimum pension age (57 from April 2028) and your State Pension age; and, for each gift you've recorded, when its seven-year inheritance tax clock runs out, plus the taper relief steps if your recent gifts are large enough to be taxed. Your plan holds the year you were born and the year of each gift, not the exact day, so age dates sit at the start of the year and gift dates at the end of it, the latest they can fall. Each comes with a reminder a week before. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-a-loan-calculator-pay-by-the-hour-and-saving-for-a-target https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-a-loan-calculator-pay-by-the-hour-and-saving-for-a-target Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Three gaps we found by comparing our free calculators with other UK sites are now filled. A new loan repayment calculator shows the monthly payment, the total you repay and the interest on a personal or car loan from its APR and term, and what paying a little extra each month saves: £10,000 at 7.9% over five years costs about £201 a month and £2,059 in interest. The take-home pay calculator now takes an hourly rate as well as an annual salary, and shows your pay per hour after tax, National Insurance and student loan. And the savings growth calculator works the other way round too: enter a target and a number of years, and it shows how much a month gets you there, in an ISA and in an ordinary account. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-start-from-a-question https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-14-start-from-a-question Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The free calculator library now has a second way in. Above the topics are six questions people actually start with: understand my money, grow my wealth, make a big purchase, plan my future, protect my family, and plan as a couple. Each opens a short route through the calculators in the order you would need them. Two new calculators begin the first route: a household budget calculator, which shows what is left each month, how far your cash would stretch, and the usual order for spare money (a month's buffer, expensive debt, an emergency fund, any employer pension match, then long-term saving); and a net worth calculator, which splits what you own into what you can reach now, what sits in pensions and what is tied up in property. And every calculator now ends with the next question it raises, linked to the calculator that answers it, or to the full plan where only the whole picture can. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-four-more-free-calculators-care-tax-free-cash-children-and-l https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-four-more-free-calculators-care-tax-free-cash-children-and-l Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Four more of the questions readers ask now have free calculators. The care home means test calculator shows when the council in England helps with care home fees, whether your home counts, how long your savings pay first, and your weekly share once they reach the £23,250 and £14,250 limits. Tax-free cash: now or later compares taking your pension's tax-free quarter now and moving it into ISAs with leaving it in the pension: for your own spending the two are close, but if you die at 75 or over, what is left in a pension is taxed as your beneficiaries' income, tax-free quarter included. Junior ISA vs junior pension follows the same payments into each, in today's money. The rent a room calculator shows the £7,500 a year you can earn tax-free from a lodger, and which method pays less tax above it. Their limits are now checked daily against gov.uk with the rest. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-four-new-free-calculators https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-four-new-free-calculators Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Four questions readers ask most now have their own free calculators, each using the same tax and projection engine as the app. The 60% tax trap calculator finds the pension contribution that brings your income back to £100,000 and what it really costs: on £112,000, £12,000 into a pension saves £7,200 of income tax, so it costs £4,800 of take-home pay, with salary sacrifice, Scottish rates and childcare support included. Retiring into a market crash replays seven episodes (1929, 1937, 1966, 1973, 2000, 2008 and 2022) from the year you retire, against the same plan with no crash. Gifts from surplus income shows how much regular giving is free of inheritance tax at once, with no seven-year clock. The tapered annual allowance calculator works out threshold and adjusted income for you, then your pension allowance and any charge. All four are in the calculator library, and work entirely in your browser. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-spending-while-working-a-simpler-lever https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-spending-while-working-a-simpler-lever Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The What If tab's Spending while working lever now simply adds to or takes from your annual living expenses for the years until you retire: switch it on, move it up or down from no change, and it shows your expenses figure before and after. Apply to my plan writes the new figure to the Expenses tab. It works only when your Expenses are a single annual figure. If you've itemised them, the lever says so, because changing an itemised budget means adding or editing an expense line on the Expenses tab, not scaling every category. This replaces the version released earlier today that added a separate extra amount; if your plan picked one up, the Expenses tab shows it and moves it into your expenses with one click. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-salary-sacrifice-after-april-2029 https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-salary-sacrifice-after-april-2029 Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT From April 2029 only the first £2,000 a year of salary you sacrifice into a pension stays free of National Insurance; above that you pay NI on it as you would on pay, though the income tax saving is unchanged (announced in the November 2025 Budget). Your projection now applies that from 2029/30, so if you sacrifice more than £2,000 a year your take-home pay in those years is a little lower than before: on the demo plan's £10,000 sacrifice, £160 a year. The Tax tab and the salary sacrifice calculator now show the NI saving from April 2029 beside today's. The Tax tab's saving figures are also more precise when your salary sits near a tax or NI threshold: they now work out the tax and NI on your pay with and without the sacrifice, as the projection does, instead of applying a single rate. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-can-i-afford-to-retire-early https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-can-i-afford-to-retire-early Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hundred Summers now answers the early-retirement question more fully, on the screens and in the AI Copilot. If your plan stops work before your pension can be drawn (55, or 57 from April 2028), the Pension Income tab shows the bridge: your savings when you stop, what's drawn before the pension unlocks, and what's left, or the age the savings run short. The earliest retirement age the app finds can now be before 55, when your ISAs and savings can carry the years until then; it used to stop looking at 55. The What If tab has a new Pension investment mix lever: see what moving your pensions to a more cautious mix (or a more adventurous one) does to your plan, its growth and its swings. The Copilot can now work out the earliest age you could retire and the most you could spend a year, on the central projection, at 85% confidence or against every historical start year, and run the health what-ifs with ages it chooses (it's never sent your health details). Asked "can I afford to retire early?", it answers in a set order: when your pension can be drawn and how the years before are funded, your spending against the Retirement Living Standards, the earliest age that works, the most you could spend, tax, the State Pension, and the risks, with options calculated by the engine. It still lays out options without choosing between them. Separately, the Copilot now sees the spending you've itemised in your Expenses rather than an older single figure. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-a-clearer-spending-lever-on-the-what-if-tab https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-a-clearer-spending-lever-on-the-what-if-tab Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The What If tab's pre-retirement spending lever is now called Spending while working, and says what it does: it replaces the total from your Expenses, rather than adding to it. It has an on/off switch, so your plan uses your Expenses as entered until you turn it on. The slider now starts in the middle, at your Expenses total, so you can try spending more or less from there. If you set it below that total, a note says by how much, and that the result only holds if your real spending falls by that amount; your Expenses themselves don't change. Saved scenarios now mention this lever only when it differs from your Expenses. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-your-plan-through-history-s-worst-stretches https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-13-your-plan-through-history-s-worst-stretches Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Stress Test tab's historical backtest has two new readings. The first is the most you could spend a year in retirement that history never broke: the highest base spending, in today's money, at which your plan survives every start year on record since 1928, with the start year that sets the limit. Because one bad sequence sets it, it sits below what the central projection allows, and the tab says so. The second is a set of cards for seven remembered market episodes: the 1929 crash, the 1937 slump and the war years, the great inflation from 1966, the 1973 oil shock, the dot-com crash, 2008 and 2022. Each one starts in the year you retire, where a bad run does the most damage, and shows whether your spending is still covered to the end of the plan and what's left. Before the episode and after the record ends, your own assumptions carry the plan, and a no-shock card shows exactly your main projection for comparison. These are past sequences, not forecasts. Separately, the "most you could spend" figures elsewhere in the app now keep your itemised spending for the years before retirement, which they had been replacing with an older single figure. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-07-the-copilot-calculates-its-options https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-07-the-copilot-calculates-its-options Wed, 07 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT When you ask the AI Copilot what a change would do, or to compare options, it now works each one out with your full plan instead of estimating. Retiring at a different age, spending more or less in your early retirement years, paying more into a pension, overpaying the mortgage, deferring the State Pension, a different way of drawing your pensions and savings: each option runs through the same calculations as the rest of the app, on your device, and the Copilot quotes the results. Under its answer, each option appears as a card beside your plan as it stands: whether spending is covered to the end of the plan (and if not, when it first falls short), net worth at retirement and at the end, and lifetime tax, all in today's money. The card also lists exactly what was changed, and anything the Copilot asked for that your plan can't model. Open in What If loads the option into the What If tab, where you see the same numbers and can adjust it further. Only the resulting figures go back to the Copilot, never your plan itself, and it still lays out options without saying which to choose. Building this also fixed saved What If scenarios, which had been ignoring changes to Freedom-years spending and to phased retirement steps when compared and exported. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-05-one-optional-question-when-you-start https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-05-one-optional-question-when-you-start Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The first step of setting up a new plan now asks how you heard about Hundred Summers, answered in your own words. If you joined before we asked, you'll see the same question once, on a small card at the top of the app; answer it or tap No thanks and it won't come back on that device. It's optional, and the answer is counted anonymously, like the other usage counts described in the Privacy Policy. It's never linked to your account or your plan, it's limited to 100 characters, and email addresses and long numbers are removed on your device before it's sent, so please leave out names and contact details. It tells us where to spend our effort reaching people like you. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-04-chart-colours-you-can-tell-apart https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-04-chart-colours-you-can-tell-apart Sun, 04 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Every chart now draws from one set of colours made from Hundred Summers' own palette, and each thing keeps its colour wherever it appears: pensions are teal, savings blue, property amber, pay violet, tax orange, debt and inheritance tax red, and totals such as net worth a dark line. Each set of neighbouring colours in a chart has been checked so that people with the common forms of colour blindness can still tell them apart, in both light and dark mode. Chart legends and tooltips now show values in plain dark text next to a colour swatch, rather than in the series colour, which was hard to read. The PDF report uses the same colours, and its redrawn saved chart views no longer lose their net worth and total lines, which had been printing without a colour. In dark mode, buttons on teal now use dark text, which reads far more clearly than the white it replaces. Nothing about how your plan is calculated has changed. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-03-plainer-words-throughout https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-03-plainer-words-throughout Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT We have rewritten the wording across the app, the guides and the calculators in a plainer voice. Labels and headings are in ordinary sentence case ("Net worth today" rather than "Net Worth Today"). The long dashes that ran through nearly every sentence have mostly given way to commas, colons and full stops. Headings on the front page now say what each section is, such as How it works and Pricing, in place of slogans. A few pointers that still sent you to an Events tab now name the Financial goals tab it became. No figure, rule or calculation has changed. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-03-a-lighter-frame-around-your-plan https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-03-a-lighter-frame-around-your-plan Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The bar along the top of the app is now white instead of dark navy, and so are the edge of the Your Facts panel, the menu and settings headers, and the previous/next bar on phones. Your plan is the thing to look at, not the frame around it. The top bar has a new Your facts button on the right. On a computer it keeps the facts panel open beside whatever tab you're on; on a phone it takes you to Your Facts. Dark mode follows suit. Nothing about how your plan is calculated has changed. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-a-plainer-landing-page https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-a-plainer-landing-page Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The front page now shows the app itself. The opening section has one headline, two buttons (start free, or explore the demo) and a real screenshot of the demo plan's Overview, in place of a second, larger logo and a third button. The 80-second introduction film has moved to its own section just below. On larger screens it starts playing, muted, only when you scroll to it, so nobody downloads it unless they get that far. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-health-and-your-plan-four-what-ifs https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-health-and-your-plan-four-what-ifs Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The What If tab has a new Health and your plan panel. It shows what four common health-led turns would do to your money, each run through your full plan. Ill health stopping you working at an age you choose uses the same calculation as the Protection tab, including any income protection or critical illness cover you've recorded. Going part-time for your wellbeing earns a share of your salary from an age until you retire. Needing care starts paid care at an age you choose. Spending more while you're able adds an extra amount each year until your healthy life expectancy, or an age you pick. Each card says whether spending is still covered to the end of your plan, when it first goes short if not, and what's left at the end in today's money. Change an age or an amount and the result updates. Your plan itself doesn't change, and the panel shows only the money consequence, never whether the change is worth it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-healthy-life-expectancy-from-ons-figures https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-healthy-life-expectancy-from-ons-figures Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Longevity tab has always shown two ages: how long you might live, and how long you might stay in good health. The second one used to be a rule of thumb (87% of your life expectancy). It now comes from the Office for National Statistics' latest healthy life expectancy figures for the UK (2022 to 2024, published February 2026). They give, for each age and sex, the share of remaining life people spend in good health, and the tab applies that share to your own life expectancy, so the same health answers move both ages. Beside it, the tab shows the plain UK average for someone your age. For many people the new age is earlier: the demo plan's 40-year-old moves from 80 to 74, against a UK average of 66 for a man of 40. The Overview's goal timeline now shades your expected years in good health, and a life goal set after them says so. The tab also offers that age as the end of your active retirement years, but only you can apply it, because ending them earlier lowers the extra spending your plan allows for. Your projection doesn't change unless you choose that. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-your-health-details-stay-with-you https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-your-health-details-stay-with-you Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Longevity tab can ask about smoking, alcohol, exercise, BMI, medical conditions, family history and stress. That is health information, and it now has its own protections. The AI Copilot no longer receives anything worked out from it: until today it was sent your estimated life expectancy, healthy life expectancy and "biological age", which are all calculated from those answers. Now it is told only the age your plan runs to. When you share your plan with an adviser, your health answers are left out unless you tick a box that names them, and your adviser sees average-health values in their place. If your adviser then proposes changes, your own answers can't be overwritten. The Privacy Policy has a new section that explains all of this. Your plan, including these answers, still stays on your device. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-life-goals-what-the-money-is-for https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-02-life-goals-what-the-money-is-for Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT A plan is there to pay for a life, so you can now say what you want that life to include. Your Facts has a new Life goals tab for goals that aren't purchases: places to go, time with people, things to learn or give. Each one sits on the Overview's goal timeline at the age you choose, and shows which stage of life it falls in: while you're working, or the Freedom, Contentment or Later life years of retirement. A goal adds nothing to your projection by itself. If one costs money, give it a cost and it becomes an ordinary expense event, which the plan pays for, and the goal then shows whether it's funded. If you're not sure where to start, the tab offers three questions adapted from George Kinder's life-planning approach, and new plans can answer them at the end of setup. Life goals are in the PDF report and the Excel workbook too. The demo plan has three. The plan shows what each goal costs and when it falls, never whether it's worth it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-01-drawn-icons-in-place-of-emoji https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-01-drawn-icons-in-place-of-emoji Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT The second step of the new look. Every icon in the app is now drawn in one consistent line style, instead of emoji that looked different on every phone and computer. That covers the life timeline, the chart markers, the menus, the event and account types, and the warning signs. Emoji that only decorated a heading or a button have gone, so the words stand on their own. The PDF report and the messages the app shows you follow suit. Nothing about how your plan is calculated has changed. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-01-a-new-look https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-10-01-a-new-look Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Hundred Summers has its own typefaces and colours. Text and figures are set in Instrument Sans, with digits that line up in columns, and headings in Bricolage Grotesque. Both are served from our own site, so loading them sends nothing to anyone else. The navy and teal stay, on a cooler, cleaner background with the sunrise amber of the logo for highlights. Cards lose their coloured stripes and capital-letter labels, the stack of tinted boxes at the top of each tab becomes a single quiet line, and the Overview's reality check is a plain panel with the score in colour. Dark mode follows the same palette. Nothing about how your plan is calculated has changed. More of the redesign follows: drawn icons in place of emoji, and a calmer landing page. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-30-expenses-both-lifetime-figures-in-today-s-money https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-30-expenses-both-lifetime-figures-in-today-s-money Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT On the Expenses tab, each line shows what you'll pay and what it really costs your plan: the payments plus what that money would have grown into. "You'll pay" was always in today's money, but "really costs" followed the Future £ setting, so the pair looked much further apart than they are. Both are now always in today's money. On the demo plan, £1,600 a month on travel from 60 to 92 is £633,600 you'll pay and about £1.64 million it really costs, rather than the £5.9 million in future money shown before. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-30-premium-bonds-as-an-account-type https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-30-premium-bonds-as-an-account-type Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Savings accounts can now be set as Premium Bonds. Prizes are tax-free, so the account adds nothing to your savings tax, and the plan holds you to the £50,000 limit per person. Anything that would take it over the limit (a regular contribution, leftover surplus, or prizes once you're full) is kept as ordinary cash instead, as NS&I would pay it out. Until now, only an account's name decided whether it was treated as Premium Bonds, with no limit applied. If you have a cash account called Premium Bonds, the Assets tab will offer to switch it to the new type; until you do, it's taxed as ordinary cash. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-30-copy-your-working-spending-into-retirement https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-30-copy-your-working-spending-into-retirement Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT When you itemise your spending, the Retirement breakdown now has a Copy from working button. It fills retirement with a copy of your working-life items, so you only need to change what will be different, such as dropping the commute or adding more travel. If you've already entered retirement items, it asks before replacing them, and items you've marked essential or nice-to-have keep that label. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-29-the-cashflow-map-in-monthly-figures https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-29-the-cashflow-map-in-monthly-figures Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Cashflow tab's money map, which shows one year at a time, now has a Yearly / Monthly switch. Monthly shows every flow as a month (the year's amount divided by 12), which is easier to set beside a payslip or a household budget. One-off items such as a lump sum or a big purchase are spread across the year too. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-29-savings-contributions-the-surplus-can-t-pay-are-now-shown https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-29-savings-contributions-the-surplus-can-t-pay-are-now-shown Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT A regular contribution you set on a savings account is paid only from what's left each year after spending, tax and pension contributions. When there isn't enough, the accounts are paid in the order they're listed and the rest simply doesn't happen, because the plan never dips into savings to make it up. Until now that happened silently: the account summary showed the amount you set, not what was actually paid. The Savings & Investments tab now shows what each account was paid over the plan against what you set, and flags the first year the surplus falls short and by how much. The Cashflow tab's insights include it too, and the Methodology page explains the rule. The demo plan is a good example: its £12,000 a year into an ISA is paid in part, or not at all, in 14 of its 20 working years. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-charges-pot-by-pot https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-charges-pot-by-pot Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The charges table no longer rolls everything into one average. An average across all your pensions and investments can hide the one expensive pot or fund that's worth moving. Now the Pensions tab lists each pot, most expensive first, with its own charge and what it takes over the whole plan in today's money. Savings & Investments does the same for each invested account (cash accounts pay no charges). The headline figures now name your most expensive pot or account instead of showing an average. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-a-pensions-tab-next-to-savings-investments https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-a-pensions-tab-next-to-savings-investments Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Your pensions now have a tab of their own, free for everyone, next to Savings & Investments. It shows what's in each pot today, what goes in this year from you and your employer, and what the pots are worth when you retire, with a chart of each pot building up and then being drawn on. A summary table gives each pot's growth rate, its charge and its growth after charges, and any final-salary pension is listed with the income it pays and any tax-free lump sum. The table showing what your charges cost, and what moving to a cheaper provider would be worth, has moved here from Savings & Investments, because pensions are usually most of what you pay. Pension Income is still where you plan how to turn the pots into income. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-the-validation-pack-our-tax-rules-worked-by-hand https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-the-validation-pack-our-tax-rules-worked-by-hand Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new public page, /validation.html, sets 30 standard cases beside the figure our engine produces for each. They cover income tax (including Scotland), National Insurance, savings and dividend tax, capital gains tax, pension allowances and tax-free cash, the State Pension, annuities and inheritance tax. Every case is worked by hand from the official gov.uk or HMRC rule, step by step, and you can download them all as a spreadsheet. The engine's figures are recalculated whenever the site is built, and the build fails if any case differs by more than £1, so the page can't drift from the app. Working the cases by hand turned up four places where the plan didn't follow the rule, all now fixed. Capital gains tax gave people with little other income too much of the 18% band. The £2 million taper on the residence nil-rate band was applied after business relief and charity gifts instead of before. The 36% charity rate tested the wrong amount, so estates that qualified were charged 40%, including HMRC's own worked example. And tax-free cash from a final-salary pension wasn't capped at the scheme limit. If your plan involves any of these, its figures may have moved. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-the-2027-cash-isa-limit-and-the-starting-rate-for-savings https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-the-2027-cash-isa-limit-and-the-starting-rate-for-savings Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Two savings rules the plan now follows. From 6 April 2027 anyone under 65 can put at most £12,000 a year into cash ISAs; the overall £20,000 allowance is unchanged, and at 65 and over the full £20,000 can still go into cash (HMRC, 17 September 2026). Until now the plan let a cash ISA take the whole £20,000 in every year. From 2027 it caps cash ISA contributions at £12,000 and keeps the rest as ordinary, taxable cash rather than investing it for you. Stocks and shares ISAs are unaffected. Second, the £5,000 starting rate for savings is now applied. If your other income is under £17,570 (typically an early retirement living on savings before pensions start), up to £5,000 of interest is tax-free on top of the £1,000 savings allowance. While adding it we found the savings and dividend allowances had been used up on income your personal allowance already covered, so those years were charged tax that isn't due: £16,000 of interest with no other income was charged £686, and is now charged nothing. Both are on the Methodology page. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-your-take-home-pay-on-the-tax-tab https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-your-take-home-pay-on-the-tax-tab Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Tax tab's "Current Year Tax Position" now ends where most people start: your take-home pay for the year, and roughly what that is a month, after income tax, National Insurance, any student loan and your own pension contributions. Adding it turned up a fault in the card. It worked this year's tax out on its own rather than taking it from your projection, so if you use salary sacrifice, or pay into a pension from your salary, it ignored both: it taxed your full pay and charged NI on it. Your projection was always right; this card wasn't. It now shows the projection's own figures, line by line: your pay, the salary you sacrifice, your own contributions, taxable income, each tax band, NI and any student loan. So everything above the take-home figure adds up to it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-retirement-withdrawals-now-come-out-at-the-start-of-each-yea https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-retirement-withdrawals-now-come-out-at-the-start-of-each-yea Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT In retirement your plan takes money out of your pensions and your savings each year to pay for that year. Until now the two were timed differently: pension money came out at the start of the year, but savings came out at the end, after a full year of investment growth. So money you were about to spend kept growing for a year first, but only if it came from savings. Now both come out at the start of the year. It is one rule for every source, so no withdrawal order looks better purely because of timing, and it is the cautious choice. In reality most people withdraw monthly, so this assumes slightly less growth than you would really get. If your plan draws heavily on savings in retirement, its later-life figures will be lower. The demo plan's net worth at 92 falls by about 8.6%, and the most it can sustainably spend by about £1,400 a year. Plans that mostly draw on pensions barely change. Working years are not affected at all. It also moves us slightly further from the one adviser plan we cross-check against (now about 6% lower at 89, from 5%), in the same direction as before: we are the more cautious of the two. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-our-methodology-page-had-fallen-behind-the-engine-it-s-corre https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-our-methodology-page-had-fallen-behind-the-engine-it-s-corre Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT An independent reviewer read our Methodology page closely and rated two risks highly. Both came from sentences that had not kept up with the engine. First, it said capital gains tax on selling a second property was not deducted. It is: the gain above what you paid is taxed in the year of sale and paid out of your plan, as it always has been since that feature was added, and your main home is exempt. Second, it said tax rates were held at 2024/25 levels. The engine actually uses the current 2026/27 rates, the new Scottish bands, the dividend rate rise from April 2026 and the savings and property income rate rises already legislated for April 2027, all checked against their official pages every morning. The page, the PDF report and the Excel export now say so, and an automated test stops them drifting again. We have also renamed the stress test's headline from "Plan success rate" to "Simulated markets funded", with a note that it is a model result, not the chance your actual retirement succeeds. The number is the same; the label says more honestly what it counts. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-when-could-i-retire-see-every-age-side-by-side https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-28-when-could-i-retire-see-every-age-side-by-side Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT "What would it take?" on the Overview already told you the earliest age your plan could afford. Now you can see the whole range at once. Press "When could I retire?" and your plan is re-run at every retirement age up to five years either side of the one you've planned, with nothing else changed. Each row shows three things: whether your planned spending lasts to the end of the plan, how often the plan survives the stress test's simulated markets (with its margin of error, so your planned age's row matches the Stress Test tab exactly), and the most you could spend a year in retirement, in today's money, while still paying for every year. Each row is a full stress test of your plan, so the table works in the background and fills in row by row, a second or two each on a computer. It shows how the date moves your plan. It doesn't tell you which date to choose. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-fixed-things-you-dated-this-year-now-count https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-fixed-things-you-dated-this-year-now-count Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Your projection starts from today's balances, and its first projected year is next calendar year. Until now, anything one-off dated in the current year fell into a gap. A windfall, a one-off expense, a final-salary lump sum paid at your current age, or a downsizing timed for now was worked out and then thrown away, so it had no effect on your plan at all. A £30,000 bill dated this year changed nothing, and neither did a £50,000 gift. Now each is counted in the first projected year. So is this year's instance of anything that repeats less than yearly, such as a car every five years. A yearly item starting this year begins in the first projected year, like your salary and spending always have. The event editor now says where a this-year item is counted, and the Methodology page explains the rule. If you had entered anything dated this year, your figures will now include it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-the-old-simplified-simulation-is-gone https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-the-old-simplified-simulation-is-gone Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT With every simulation now running your whole plan, the faster simplified copy of the plan's rules it replaced has been removed, along with its separate rules for tax and drawdown. There is now one set of rules for everything: the projection and every simulated market run through the same code, so they cannot drift apart again. Its tests were carried across and now check the engine instead. Removing it also turned up a long-standing problem, now fixed: see the next entry. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-every-simulation-now-runs-your-whole-plan https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-every-simulation-now-runs-your-whole-plan Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Earlier today the stress test moved onto the same engine as the rest of your plan. The other four simulations have now followed: the couples stress test, the historical backtest, the 85%-confidence answers in "What would it take?" and the success rates in the saved-scenario comparison. So every simulated figure in the app now pays capital gains tax, tax on savings interest and dividends, and follows every drawdown rule exactly as your projection does. The backtest is where you will see it most. It replays your plan through every stretch of market history since 1928, and some plans now come through fewer of those stretches: the demo plan survives 17 of 44 instead of 25. That is not a harsher market model. It is tax the old simplified version never charged, falling in the plan's last few years. The confidence answers are the heaviest calculation in the app, dozens of stress tests in a row. They now stop each one as soon as its answer is settled, so they give exactly the same result as running every market in full, in a few seconds. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-the-stress-test-now-runs-your-whole-plan-on-every-simulated- https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-the-stress-test-now-runs-your-whole-plan-on-every-simulated- Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The stress test's success rate is probably the most important number in the app, and until now it came from a faster, simplified copy of the plan's rules. Our own Methodology page admitted it was "not yet reconciled to the pound": it left out capital gains tax, tax on savings interest and dividends, and parts of the drawdown rules. Now every simulated market path runs through exactly the same engine as the rest of your plan, with the same tax, pensions, drawdown and events. Only the market changes. Our automated tests check three things: with market swings switched off, every path reproduces your projection to the penny; any single path, replayed on its own, gives exactly the same result; and the plan's books balance to within £1 in every year of every path. On the demo plan the success rate moves from 65% to 58%; on most plans the change is a few points either way. Running the whole plan hundreds of times takes longer, so it now happens in the background: after an edit the stress figures take a second or two to update, a little longer on a phone. Building this also found and fixed a fault. When a market fall left your savings short of a planned withdrawal, the missing amount used to count as money you had received. It now comes from your pension, with tax, as the drawdown rules intend. The couples stress test, the historical backtest, the 85%-confidence option in "What would it take?" and the saved-scenario comparison still use the older simplified model for now; they are next. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-new-plans-now-assume-investment-charges-of-0-5-a-year https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-new-plans-now-assume-investment-charges-of-0-5-a-year Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Until now a plan assumed your investments cost nothing unless you set a charge yourself. No real pension or investment account is free: the Department for Work and Pensions' survey of workplace pensions puts the average charge at 0.48% a year, and around 1% a year costs roughly a quarter of a pot over 30 years. So a plan created from today starts at 0.5%, close to that average, taken off the growth of every pension and invested account (not bank accounts). If your provider charges more or less, set your own figure in Methodology, or give a single pot or account its own rate. Existing plans are unchanged: if you created yours before today, it keeps the 0% it was built with, so none of your figures have moved. The Savings tab and the Methodology page point this out, and the Savings tab shows what each charge level would cost you over the plan, if you want to set a realistic figure. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-the-success-rate-now-shows-its-margin-of-error https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-the-success-rate-now-shows-its-margin-of-error Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The stress test's success rate comes from a sample of market paths, 500 unless you change it. A different sample of the same size would give a slightly different answer, so a plan showing 92% could just as well be 89% or 95%. Showing one bare number invited people to read it as more exact than it is. Every success rate now carries its margin of error: on the Overview, the Stress Test tab, the Couples tab and in the PDF, Excel and adviser reports. It is a 95% range, calculated in a way that stays honest at the extremes, so a plan that works in every path shows 99–100% rather than a false certainty. It covers one thing only: the uncertainty from running a sample of paths. Whether the assumptions behind those paths are right is a separate question, and usually the bigger one. Raising the number of simulations on the Methodology page narrows the range: for a plan near 90%, from about ±2.6 points at 500 paths to ±0.6 at 10,000. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-correction-business-and-farm-relief-now-uses-the-2-5-million https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-correction-business-and-farm-relief-now-uses-the-2-5-million Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT From April 2026, business and agricultural relief at 100% is capped. The plan used £1 million, the figure first announced, but the cap became law at £2.5 million, with 50% relief above it. We found it while checking every figure in the new overview guide against gov.uk. If you have entered more than £1 million of qualifying business or farm assets, your estimated inheritance tax falls, by up to £300,000. Below £1 million nothing changes. Two rules are still not modelled, and the Methodology page says so. A late spouse's unused allowance can pass on, which would lower the tax further. AIM-listed shares get only 50% relief, so entering them as business assets overstates the relief. The daily check that watches official sources now includes the gov.uk page with these figures, so a change to them will be caught. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-new-guide-optimising-your-plan-starting-from-your-situation https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-new-guide-optimising-your-plan-starting-from-your-situation Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT "How do I make my plan better?" is the question people ask most, and none of our guides answered it directly. Each one goes deep on a single lever. The new overview does. It sets out every way a UK plan can be improved: tax while you work, where your savings go, how you draw them down and what your estate pays. A decision tree of eight questions about your situation shows which levers are relevant to you. You open a question if the answer is yes and move on if it's no, and none of them ends in an instruction. It covers the combinations that trip people up, such as salary sacrifice pushing pension contributions against the annual allowance, the two ISA switches sharing one £20,000, and drawdown order after pensions enter the estate in April 2027. It also shows how to test a combination in the app, and names the things Hundred Summers doesn't yet model. It sits at the top of the guides page, every other guide links back to it, and the What-If explorer links to it. Read it at hundredsummers.co.uk/guides/optimise-your-plan.html https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-tidier-on-phones-especially-with-larger-text https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-27-tidier-on-phones-especially-with-larger-text Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT A member told us the estate levers on the Inheritance tab didn't line up on their phone. It took three reports to find out why: they use one of the app's larger text sizes, and every check we ran used the default. At a larger size, every lever card except one ran past the right-hand edge of its panel. Once we knew what to look for, we checked every tab the same way and found similar problems in seven more places, including one that showed at the normal text size too: on the Tax tab, the salary-sacrifice box cut off its own '/yr' label on any phone. All of it is fixed. Cards, boxes and labels now shrink and wrap to fit instead of spilling over. Desktop is unchanged, to the pixel. And the daily check that watches the live site now opens every tab on three phones, including the largest text size, and fails if anything is wider than its box, so this can't quietly come back. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-26-use-your-isa-allowance-even-in-a-year-with-nothing-spare https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-26-use-your-isa-allowance-even-in-a-year-with-nothing-spare Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Last week's switch fills the ISA allowance from money a year has left over. That is no help at all to the situation it matters most in — retired, nothing spare, and a large pot sitting unwrapped while the allowance expires every April. There is now a second switch beside it on the Savings tab: “Move existing savings into the ISA allowance”. With it on, whatever allowance the surplus leaves is filled from savings you already hold. Cash goes first, because moving cash costs nothing. After that it sells unwrapped investments, which is the move usually called a Bed & ISA, taking the holdings with the smallest built-up gain first so the tax is the smallest that fills the allowance. That includes your cash hub, the account each year's leftover surplus piles up in, which on a plan that saves hard is usually the biggest unwrapped holding there is — it is drained last, and only after the year's spending has already been funded, so the money is never taken from under your feet. Investment bonds are never sold, because taking money out of one is taxed as income rather than as a gain. Selling an investment is a real disposal, so the projection charges the capital gains tax and pays it out of the sale proceeds, which means a little more is sold than is sheltered and the switch can never push your plan into a shortfall. And it is deliberately not sold to you as free money: bringing a tax bill forward to avoid future dividend and interest tax is not always worth it, so the card shows what it sheltered and what the tax cost, and the honest way to decide is to compare your net worth at plan end with it on and off. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-22-see-your-accounts-stacked-or-side-by-side https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-22-see-your-accounts-stacked-or-side-by-side Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Savings tab's Projected Growth by Account chart now has a Stacked / Separate switch. Stacked is unchanged and still the default: the bands add up to your total savings and each band's thickness is one account. That answers what you have and what makes it up, but it cannot answer how one account compares with another — in a stack each band sits on top of everything below it, so its position on the page has nothing to do with its value. Switch to Separate and every account is drawn from zero, so you can see which one is really carrying the plan and which quietly empties. The wording under the chart changes with the view, and the note about where each year's leftover surplus goes stays in both. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-22-the-search-box-on-the-calculator-and-guide-libraries-now-act https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-22-the-search-box-on-the-calculator-and-guide-libraries-now-act Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Found while checking the newly sorted guides page in a real browser: the search box above the calculator library had never filtered anything in production. The site refuses inline JavaScript on purpose — a deliberate security setting — and the little script behind the box was inline, so the browser quietly declined to run it. Nothing looked broken, because the topic chips beside it are ordinary links and worked fine. The script is now served as a proper file, which the security policy allows, and typing in the box narrows the cards as it always should have: “pension” brings 19 of the 66 calculators, across four topics, hiding the rest. A test now forbids inline scripts on every public page, so this cannot come back. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-22-the-guides-are-sorted-by-topic-like-the-calculators https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-22-the-guides-are-sorted-by-topic-like-the-calculators Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Thirty-seven guides had become a long scroll, the same problem the calculator library had. They are now classified on exactly the same seven topics — retirement planning, pensions, pay and tax, property, savings, protection, inheritance — with the same colours and the same icons, so the colour you learn on one page still means the same thing on the other. Where a guide and a calculator cover the same ground they sit under the same heading. Each guide now has a one-line summary on its card so the page can be scanned instead of read, there is a search box that narrows the list as you type, and a row of topic chips that jumps straight to a section. A test holds the two libraries together: every guide must be filed under exactly one topic, and the topics themselves must match the calculators', so a new guide cannot be left unclassified and the two lists cannot drift apart. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-21-what-one-company-going-wrong-would-do-to-your-plan https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-21-what-one-company-going-wrong-would-do-to-your-plan Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT A fund of hundreds of companies cannot go to zero. One company can, and employer shares and share schemes quietly become a large part of what people are relying on. The plan could never see this: an account holding £100,000 of your employer and an account holding £100,000 of a global tracker look identical in your figures. So there is now a tick box on each investment account — “this is one company’s shares” — and when you use it the Cashflow tab answers the question that matters. Not the percentage, which you could work out yourself, but what the engine says happens if that holding were worth nothing tomorrow: whether your plan still funds every year, or the age it would run short instead. It also notes how much of the holding sits outside a tax wrapper, because selling down is a disposal and capital gains tax applies. Nothing is guessed from account names — a Stocks & Shares ISA is not one company, and the app will never assume it is. It states a fact about your plan and recommends nothing. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-21-new-guide-pension-charges-and-what-they-really-cost https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-21-new-guide-pension-charges-and-what-they-really-cost Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The one cost in a retirement plan that is certain is the charge. Markets may or may not deliver; the charge comes off the whole pot every year, which is why it compounds like negative growth. The new guide sets out the layers most statements do not add up for you — the provider charge, the fund's ongoing charges figure, the transaction costs that sit outside it, and any adviser charge — then the caps that do and do not apply to you: 0.75% on the default fund of a workplace pension used for automatic enrolment, 1.5% then 1% on a stakeholder, and a 1% cap on early exit charges from 55. On £200,000 left for 25 years at 5% before charges, paying 0.4% leaves £615,633 and paying 1.2% leaves £508,117 — a gap of £107,516 on a pot nobody added to. It also covers the part that costs people more than the charges do: the guaranteed annuity rates, protected tax-free cash and with-profits terms that can be worth far more than the saving, and the rule that safeguarded benefits over £30,000 need regulated advice before any transfer. Read it at hundredsummers.co.uk/guides/pension-charges-explained.html https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-one-switch-to-use-up-your-isa-allowance-every-year https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-one-switch-to-use-up-your-isa-allowance-every-year Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The ISA allowance cannot be carried forward: a year that passes with it unused is gone. Yet a plan that runs a surplus banks that money as taxable cash by default, year after year, while the shelter expires beside it. The Savings tab now has a switch for this. Turn on “Use my ISA allowance first” and every year with money left over fills whatever remains of the allowance before the rest goes to cash — the headroom your own contributions left, and no more, so nothing overflows into a general investment account that would otherwise have stayed as cash. It goes into your largest invested ISA, or a cash ISA if that is all you hold, and if you hold no ISA at all the projection adds one and labels it so you can see it. A Lifetime ISA is never used: it takes only £4,000 a year, stops at 50, and money out before 60 carries a 25% charge. The same switch is a What-If lever, so you can see what a lifetime of using the allowance is worth before committing to it, and the stress test shelters the money too — so those years earn the ISA's return in every simulated market, not the cash hub's. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-your-own-backup-can-no-longer-be-mistaken-for-someone-else-s https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-your-own-backup-can-no-longer-be-mistaken-for-someone-else-s Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT A member opened their plan on a phone, then on a laptop, and the laptop refused the backup: “protected by a different account”. Both devices were signed in to the same account. Backups protected by your account are sealed with a key held in your account, and each device remembered that key once and then trusted its own copy forever — so if the key was ever reissued, every device still holding the old one was stranded with a message no amount of signing in could clear. Now a backup that will not open makes the device fetch the key again and retry, and the corrected key replaces the stale copy. Keys that have been replaced are kept, so files sealed with an older one still open and are quietly re-sealed the next time they are saved. Each file also carries a short, non-secret fingerprint of the key that sealed it, so if a file genuinely cannot be opened the app now tells you which account you are signed in as and whether the file belongs to a different account at all. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-the-pdf-report-now-carries-what-an-adviser-s-report-carries https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-the-pdf-report-now-carries-what-an-adviser-s-report-carries Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Comparing our report with a Voyant adviser report showed four things it lacked, all now in. A 'What would it take?' table under the headline figures gives the answers the Overview solves on the full engine: the most you could sustainably spend, the earliest affordable retirement age, how far your pots could fall today with every year still funded, what redirecting spending would buy, and whether the plan survives with no investment growth at all. The estate section itemises the estate at plan end — every pot, account and property, less debts and reliefs, the bands, the rate and the tax, with the spouse exemption stated where it applies. And the year-by-year appendix gains two tables: cash flow by line (every income and outgoing the projection books, per year) and assets by account (each pot, account, property and loan, per year). Fixing this also exposed a fault in the What-If growth lever, which had been leaving pension pots on a risk profile untouched, so 'all growth rates −2pp' moved only your savings; it now moves everything. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-checked-against-an-adviser-s-voyant-plan-the-reality-check-n https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-checked-against-an-adviser-s-voyant-plan-the-reality-check-n Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT We rebuilt one member's plan from their adviser's Voyant report, input for input, and ran both. Net worth agreed within 1% for the first fifteen years and finished 5% lower here at age 89, the difference being tax we charge in retirement that the adviser tool did not; tax over the working years agreed to the thousand. That comparison is now pinned in the test suite. It also exposed two faults, both fixed: money sold out of a general investment account to pay for an event was never assessed for capital gains tax (it is now, with the cost basis carried out pro-rata), and the stress test grew a property with no growth rate of its own at 0%. And one change of principle: your growth rate is a compound rate, but a random yearly return averaging that rate compounds to less, so the simulation's median path had been trailing the projection — near a third of it over a 50-year plan — and the reality check was marking your plan against a quietly worse central case. Each holding's simulated return is now centred half its variance higher, the standard correction, so the median path tracks the projection. Reality-check scores rise as a result (the demo plan from 48% to 65%); the Methodology page explains the arithmetic. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-pensions-stay-locked-until-access-age-more-books-that-must-b https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-pensions-stay-locked-until-access-age-more-books-that-must-b Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Three corrections and a page. First, the engine now respects the normal minimum pension age everywhere: money in a defined-contribution pension cannot be drawn, taken as a lump sum, exchanged for an annuity or used to pay an event before 55, or 57 from April 2028, whatever retirement age your plan chooses. If you plan to retire earlier, the projection now funds those years from ISAs and other savings and shows honestly where they fall short; before, it drew the pension from your retirement age. Second, an annuity on a plan already retired today no longer keeps the pot as well as the income, and the upfront lump sum is capped by what remains of the £268,275 allowance rather than the full figure. Third, the accountancy checks now go further than the balance sheet: every account, pot, property and loan must close on its own books, the cash statement must net to nothing, the allowance ledgers must reconcile, and nothing impossible may happen (no negative balance, no locked money touched, no Lifetime ISA fall before 60). All of it is described in plain English in a new Methodology section, 'How we check the arithmetic'. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-the-projection-now-audits-itself-money-can-no-longer-silentl https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-20-the-projection-now-audits-itself-money-can-no-longer-silentl Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT After last week's lump-sum fault we asked how a plan could lose a quarter of its pension without a test noticing. The answer was that nothing checked the books balanced. Now every projected year must close: the change in net worth has to equal growth, plus money that came in from outside, minus money that genuinely left, plus anything the plan could not fund — and the unexplained remainder is pinned to zero across every built-in profile, every stress test, every What-If lever and a set of random plans. Its first run found five leaks, all fixed: a one-off expense paid from a named account used to discard the rest of that year's surplus; tax on bond gains was charged but never actually drawn; a capital gains bill nothing could pay quietly overstated wealth; the property-income surcharge was missing from the tax gross-ups, so plans with rental income came up a few pounds short each year; and a mortgage overpayment carried into retirement reduced the debt without any money leaving. The Methodology page describes the check. If your plan has a one-off expense paid from savings, or an investment bond, your figures will have moved — in your favour for the first, against for the second, and correctly in both cases. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-19-tax-free-lump-sum-never-lost-and-now-opt-in https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-19-tax-free-lump-sum-never-lost-and-now-opt-in Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT A fault found on a real plan: with the tax-free lump sum switched on but no account chosen to receive it, the projection removed the lump sum from the pension and credited it nowhere, so net worth stepped down by up to £268,275 at retirement and the gap compounded for the rest of the plan. The lump sum is now always kept: with no account chosen it is paid into your current account (or your first instant-access cash account), and you can still pick a better home for it on the Pension Income tab; spending or gifting it is a Financial Event, as before. The lump sum is also now off by default. Taking it crystallises your pension so every later withdrawal is fully taxable, which is a decision to make deliberately, so new plans start without it and the toggle on the Pension Income tab turns it on. Plans that already switched it on are unchanged. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-how-many-months-your-cash-would-last https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-how-many-months-your-cash-would-last Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Cashflow tab's insights rail now answers the emergency-fund question from your own plan: how many months of committed outgoings — this year's living costs, debt repayments and protection premiums — your instant-access cash would cover if pay stopped tomorrow, which accounts count (cash ISAs yes; investments and the Lifetime ISA no), and how the figure sits against the usual three-to-six-month guidance. The redundancy stress test states the same runway beside its verdict, so you can see how much of a year without pay the buffer absorbs before investments or borrowing are touched. A fact from your numbers, not a recommendation. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-an-rss-feed-for-these-releases-and-a-proper-page-not-found https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-an-rss-feed-for-these-releases-and-a-proper-page-not-found Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT You can now follow What's new in a feed reader at hundredsummers.co.uk/feed.xml. And a mistyped or moved address now gets a real not-found page with the way back in, instead of a copy of the home page. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-the-hundred-summers-film https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-the-hundred-summers-film Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Eighty seconds on what the product is for, at the top of the home page: a life is a hundred summers and every one of them costs something; your whole financial life on one page; change a number and the plan answers; five hundred market histories; every figure from a published source, checked every morning; education, not advice; your data on your device. It plays silently with captions when you arrive on a larger screen (one click for sound) and waits for a tap on phones. It is served from our own site rather than embedded from YouTube, so watching it sends nothing to anyone else; the same film is on our YouTube channel if you would rather watch it there. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-the-calculator-library-is-easier-to-navigate https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-the-calculator-library-is-easier-to-navigate Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sixty-six calculators had become a long scroll. The library page now opens with a search box that narrows the list as you type, and a row of topic chips, one colour each, that jump straight to retirement planning, pensions, pay and tax, property and mortgages, savings and debt, protection and family, or inheritance. Every card is cut to its name and a single line saying what question it answers, and carries its topic's colour on the left edge, so you can scan a colour rather than read a paragraph. The full description still lives on each calculator's own page. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-company-car-calculator-the-private-fuel-charge https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-company-car-calculator-the-private-fuel-charge Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT If your employer also pays for the fuel you use privately, that is a second benefit in kind: the car's appropriate percentage applied to HMRC's fixed multiplier, £29,200 for 2026/27. The company car tax calculator now adds it with one tick, shows the tax it costs on top of the car and the employer's Class 1A NI on both, and states the figure that decides whether 'free fuel' is worth having: the private fuel you would otherwise have to buy each year to break even. The charge is all or nothing, so paying back some of the fuel does not help; and electricity for a fully electric car is not fuel, so no charge arises there. The multiplier joins the daily source watch. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-ten-new-guides-one-for-every-calculator-that-lacked-one https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-18-ten-new-guides-one-for-every-calculator-that-lacked-one Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Buy-to-let in 2026 works Section 24 through with real numbers, the surcharge on the way in and capital gains tax on the way out. Sole trader or limited company explains why the company route now loses at modest profits and what the tax comparison ignores. Student loans shows why they are a graduate tax and why overpaying usually loses, to write-off. ISA or pension compares the two routes on your rates and places the Lifetime ISA. Premium Bonds, cash and tax settles the after-tax comparison and what inflation does to money that sits still. Maternity leave and money prices the year and names the three things to protect. Bonuses explains where the money goes and the sacrifice that keeps it. Investment bonds and top-slicing does the HMRC method properly. Your mortgage shows how the payment is built and what the term costs. And inflation, the assumption everything rests on, with what UK prices actually did since 1988. Every figure in every guide is the engine's own and pinned in the test suite; each guide ends with its calculators and each calculator page now points back to its guide. The library reaches 36 guides. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-six-more-calculators-complete-the-library-gift-aid-tax-free- https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-six-more-calculators-complete-the-library-gift-aid-tax-free- Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Gift Aid shows the 25p per £1 the charity reclaims, the higher-rate relief you can claim back yourself and what a donation really costs. Tax-Free Childcare applies the 20% top-up with its per-child caps, the working and earnings tests both parents must meet, and the £100,000 cliff with the pension contribution that restores eligibility. Inherited pension works out what a beneficiary keeps by the owner's age at death and the beneficiary's own band, lump sum against drawdown over years, with the April 2027 inheritance tax layer on top. Critical illness cover sizes the lump sum a diagnosis would need to fund, completing the protection trio with life cover and income protection. The emergency fund measures months of essentials held against a three-to-six-month target and the time to close the gap. And the defined benefit early retirement calculator applies your scheme's reduction and finds the breakeven age at which the full pension overtakes. Four more official pages join the daily source watch. The library stands at 66, organised by topic. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-three-more-calculators-company-car-tax-maternity-and-paterni https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-three-more-calculators-company-car-tax-maternity-and-paterni Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Company car tax uses HMRC's 2026/27 appropriate percentages — 4% for electric cars, hybrids by electric range, petrol and diesel by CO2 with the RDE2 supplement — for the cash equivalent, your tax at the margin, the employer's Class 1A NI and next year's published rate. Maternity and paternity pay lays out the statutory weeks for 2026/27 (90% for six weeks, then £194.32 or 90% for 33), any employer enhancement over them, paternity pay, and the figure that matters to a household: the take-home lost over a year with the leave in it, after tax and NI fall too. And going part-time answers what a four-day week really costs — usually well under 20% of take-home — alongside the pension contributions that fall with pay, child benefit that may come back, the State Pension earnings floor and the price of each day off. The company car table and the statutory parental pay rates join the daily source watch; the library reaches 60. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-five-more-calculators-pension-income-tax-buy-to-let-rent-vs- https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-five-more-calculators-pension-income-tax-buy-to-let-rent-vs- Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pension income tax answers the most-asked retirement question — how much of my State Pension and private pension is tax — with the State Pension using the allowance first as HMRC's coding does, the split by source and your marginal rate. Buy-to-let goes from headline yield to the cash a landlord actually keeps: voids, agent, costs, mortgage interest, then tax as HMRC now charges it with interest not deductible and a 20% credit instead, the 2027 surcharge and additional-property stamp duty, for the return on equity. Rent vs buy compares wealth at the end of a chosen stay — the owner's equity after every cost against the renter's invested deposit and monthly difference — on assumptions you control. Fund charges shows what 1% a year costs against 0.2% over a lifetime. And Premium Bonds sets the tax-free prize rate against after-tax savings interest at your own band and allowance, with the gross rate an account would need to match. The library reaches 57. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-sole-trader-vs-limited-company-calculator https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-sole-trader-vs-limited-company-calculator Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The same profit taken both ways on 2026/27 rules: as a sole trader (income tax and Class 4 NI at 6% and 2%), or through a company — a director's salary, employer NI at 15% above £5,000 (the Employment Allowance withheld for a sole director, switchable), the company's running costs, corporation tax at 19% to £50,000 and 25% from £250,000 with marginal relief between, and the rest paid as dividends taxed on top of the salary at the April-2026 rates. Every line is shown for both routes and the difference is stated plainly. The page is equally plain about what is not scored — limited liability, IR35, VAT, employer pension contributions and the option to retain profit — because those, not the tax line, often decide it. Corporation tax and Employment Allowance figures join the daily source watch. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-five-more-calculators-uk-inflation-history-and-a-library-org https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-17-five-more-calculators-uk-inflation-history-and-a-library-org Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The free calculator library now has 51 tools, grouped into seven topics — retirement planning, pensions, pay and tax, property and mortgages, savings and debt, protection and family, inheritance — so the one you need is a glance away rather than a scroll. Five are new. Mortgage affordability: the income multiple and the stressed-rate test lenders actually run, your deposit and the 95% loan-to-value cap, with the binding one named. Pension tax relief: relief at source versus net pay, the 20% the provider claims, the higher-rate relief you have to claim yourself, and the true net cost. Savings growth: regular saving compounded with the tax on interest above your personal savings allowance actually charged, against the same money in an ISA. House deposit: how long your saving takes, and how much sooner with the Lifetime ISA bonus and its rules applied. Property capital gains tax: second homes and buy-to-lets with private residence relief, the exemption, the 18% and 24% rates and the 60-day deadline. And the inflation calculator now answers 'what was £100 in 1995 worth?' from the ONS consumer prices index itself — real UK inflation since 1988, refreshed from the ONS each year — rather than an assumed rate. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-child-benefit-and-voluntary-ni-figures-updated-to-2026-27-an https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-child-benefit-and-voluntary-ni-figures-updated-to-2026-27-an Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Two figures had not moved with the April 2026 uprating: child benefit is £27.05 a week for the eldest child and £17.90 for each other child (was £26.05 and £17.25), and a Class 3 voluntary National Insurance year costs £957 (£18.40 a week; was £907). Both are corrected in the engine, the child benefit and voluntary NI calculators and the plan. They were caught by something new: every published figure the engine relies on — HMRC thresholds and rates, the State Pension, Statutory Sick Pay, pension allowances, stamp duty in all three nations, the Pensions UK Living Standards, the ONS life tables and more — is now tied to the official page that publishes it, and an automated check reads those pages every morning and raises an alert the moment one of them changes. The Methodology page's promise that every number traces to a published source is now tested daily rather than at release time. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-every-free-calculator-now-shows-a-worked-example-and-a-fix-t https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-every-free-calculator-now-shows-a-worked-example-and-a-fix-t Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Each of the 46 calculator pages now carries a worked example under the calculator: one set of inputs and the results the engine produces for them, generated when the site is built by the same code that runs the live tool, so the two can never disagree. It means the arithmetic is visible without JavaScript — to search engines, to AI assistants asked to review a calculator, to reader modes and to anyone skimming on a slow connection. Building the examples also caught a fault in the 'When can I retire?' calculator: with no earnings in its simple profile, the contributions you entered were paid from the ISA until it ran dry and every remaining working year was then judged unfunded, so realistic plans were told 'not before 74'. The profile now earns what it contributes, and the calculator answers properly (the default example retires at 61). https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-six-new-guides-pension-death-benefits-which-protection-risk- https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-six-new-guides-pension-death-benefits-which-protection-risk- Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The guides library reaches 26. What happens to your pension when you die — nominations, the age-75 line, beneficiary drawdown, what defined benefit schemes pay, and how April 2027 rewrites the answer. Income protection, critical illness or life cover — the population odds of each event before retirement, what each policy pays, and how sick pay and savings set the deferred period. The first pension withdrawal — why it is over-taxed on the month-1 code, a worked £30,000 example, the three reclaim forms and the small-first-payment trick. Stamp duty when you move — SDLT, LBTT and LTT side by side with a £300,000 home worked in each nation and the buy-before-you-sell surcharge explained. The 25% tax-free lump sum — the £268,275 allowance, PCLS versus slices, the recycling rule and why the annual 'take it before the Budget' panic usually costs money. And salary sacrifice, properly explained — tax and NI both saved, the employer's 15%, the 60% zone where a contribution costs 38p in the pound, the side effects, and the £2,000 cap announced for 2029. Every worked figure is pinned in the test suite to the engine functions that produce it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-five-more-free-calculators-stamp-duty-pension-emergency-tax- https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-five-more-free-calculators-stamp-duty-pension-emergency-tax- Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The catalogue reaches 46, after a survey of what the big providers' adviser toolkits offer. Stamp duty across all three UK taxes — SDLT, Scotland's LBTT and Wales' LTT — at 2026/27 rates with first-time buyer relief, the second-home and non-resident surcharges and every slice of the working shown. The pension emergency tax calculator shows the month-1 deduction a first withdrawal suffers, what is really due at year end, how much to reclaim and which HMRC form does it. The Retirement Living Standards checker takes your expected retirement income, taxes each partner on the current bands and tells you whether it reaches the Pensions UK minimum, moderate or comfortable standard (May 2026 update), and what the next one would take. The income protection calculator sizes the insurer cap, the benefit that would hold your essentials, and how many months your sick pay, Statutory Sick Pay (on the April 2026 rules) and savings already carry you — the honest way to choose a deferred period. And an inflation calculator on the plan's own assumption, with the real return done by the Fisher equation. The app's Expenses tab and onboarding now quote the 2026 Living Standards from the same single source, and every calculator page links its public sources. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-free-calculator-the-risk-reality-before-you-retire https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-16-free-calculator-the-risk-reality-before-you-retire Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new free calculator answers the protection question insurers' sales tools answer, from published data instead: before your planned retirement age, what is the chance of being off work for two months or more, of a serious illness, or of dying — and of any one of the three? Enter your age, sex, smoking status and retirement age, add a partner for the household view, and see each risk as a percentage, as 'about 1 in N', and as the yearly rate that compounds into it. The rates are UK population figures — ONS life tables, ONS sickness-absence data, the DWP long-term absence baseline and the actuarial profession's critical-illness table shape — with every source on the page, and the page is clear that insurers' own claims data for underwritten lives comes out lower. It sizes the risk, not the answer: whether cover is worth its premium is what the app's Protection tab tests against your actual plan. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-15-easier-to-read-easier-to-use-with-assistive-technology https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-15-easier-to-read-easier-to-use-with-assistive-technology Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT An accessibility pass across the app and the public pages. You can now pinch to zoom in the app on any phone. Every figure and label is a shade darker where it was hard to read against the cream background, and colour-coded verdicts use deeper shades so the words pass the WCAG contrast standard. Every dropdown, slider and text box has a spoken name for screen readers, the menu and settings are skipped by the keyboard while closed, and every page has proper header, main-content and footer regions so you can jump straight to the content. The audit tool we used now runs as part of our checks so it stays that way. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-14-premium-subscriptions-are-open https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-14-premium-subscriptions-are-open Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Billing is now live: Premium can be bought at £4.99 a month or £49.99 a year from the upgrade screen, with payment handled entirely by Stripe — card details never touch our systems, and you can cancel or change card any time from Manage subscription in Settings. The free tier is unchanged and still needs no card. Everything about your data stays as it was: your plan lives on your device; we hold only your email, your subscription status and a Stripe customer reference. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-13-two-more-named-shocks-an-unexpected-bill-and-a-year-without- https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-13-two-more-named-shocks-an-unexpected-bill-and-a-year-without- Sun, 13 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Stress Test tab's named battery — each shock applied to your own plan and re-run through the full engine — gains the two everyday ones people actually ask about. An unexpected £20,000 bill next year is added as an ordinary expense event, paid from savings where they exist and flagged as unfunded where they don't. Redundancy next year stops your pay for twelve months and then resumes it at the same salary, with no income protection assumed, since it doesn't cover redundancy, and no redundancy payment, so it is the bare case. Both are judged twice, on the full budget and on essentials only, alongside the market crash, lower growth, higher inflation, early stop, living to 100 and early care shocks already there. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-13-terms-and-privacy-policy-as-pages-you-can-link-to https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-13-terms-and-privacy-policy-as-pages-you-can-link-to Sun, 13 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are now pages in their own right at /terms.html and /privacy.html, rather than pop-ups inside the app — so you can read them before signing up, bookmark them, or send the link to someone. They are linked from the footer of every public page and from the sign-in, upgrade and app footers. The wording is unchanged. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-13-premium-by-the-year-and-partner-codes-at-checkout https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-13-premium-by-the-year-and-partner-codes-at-checkout Sun, 13 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Premium can now be paid annually at £49.99 a year — two months free against the monthly £4.99 — chosen on the upgrade screen. The payment page also accepts promotion codes, so a discount from a community or partner we work with is entered there and just works. Everything else is unchanged: cancel anytime, billing handled by Stripe, your plan data still never leaves your device. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-13-free-calculators-type-freely-and-always-the-current-version https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-13-free-calculators-type-freely-and-always-the-current-version Sun, 13 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Two fixes to the standalone calculator pages. The number fields now accept free typing — clearing a box or typing an intermediate value no longer snaps it back, so you can change a whole figure, not one digit; values are only pulled into their sensible range when you leave the field. And the pages are no longer held in the app's offline cache, which could keep showing an older version of a calculator to anyone who had opened the app until every Hundred Summers tab was closed. If a calculator still looks stale, close all its tabs (or the installed app) once and reopen it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-12-adviser-proposals-see-exactly-what-would-change https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-12-adviser-proposals-see-exactly-what-would-change Sat, 12 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT When your adviser proposes changes, the review screen now itemises every difference against your current plan — grouped by section (Income, Pensions, Property, Inheritance, and so on) with the old value and the new one side by side, not just the adviser's note. Previously some sections — longevity and care, inheritance, the mortgage and equity-release planner, itemised expenses — weren't compared, so a proposal that touched only those showed nothing and couldn't be applied at all. Now every change is visible and every genuine proposal can be accepted, with your current plan still locked as a reversible advice record first. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-11-adviser-portal-move-devices-without-losing-client-shares https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-11-adviser-portal-move-devices-without-losing-client-shares Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The adviser portal's private key can now be protected by a backup passphrase chosen at setup. The key is encrypted on your device with that passphrase before a copy is stored — we cannot decrypt it, so shared plans stay end-to-end encrypted exactly as before — and on a new device or browser you restore the same key by entering the passphrase, keeping every existing client share readable. Without a backup, a new device still means asking clients to re-share (that promise is the point: the unencrypted key never leaves your device). Also improved: opening a share sealed to an older key now explains what happened and what to do, instead of a cryptic error. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-a-new-name-and-a-new-look-hundred-summers https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-a-new-name-and-a-new-look-hundred-summers Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The app is now Hundred Summers — a name that says what the plan is for: a hundred summers, each one funded. A sunrise takes over as the mark, the palette warms to match, and everything else stays exactly where you left it: your data (still on your own device), your plan, your subscription and every calculator and guide. The web address is now hundredsummers.co.uk — old links and bookmarks keep working and redirect here. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-would-your-retirement-have-survived-1929 https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-would-your-retirement-have-survived-1929 Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new free interactive replays your pot and spending through every complete market window since 1928 — the 1929 crash, the 1937 relapse, the 1966–81 inflation grind, the 1973 oil shock, the 2000s lost decade and every quieter start between. Each window is a full UK simulation on the app's real backtest engine: that era's return and inflation deviations layered on your own assumptions, with your spending, tax bands and State Pension carried through the replayed inflation. A survival strip shows every start year's fate; click any year — or a famous crash — and watch that retirement's pot unfold year by year. Also fixed: the standalone calculator pages now carry the site's full top navigation on desktop. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-built-from-what-britain-actually-asks-five-calculators-three https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-built-from-what-britain-actually-asks-five-calculators-three Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT We audited the questions asked most on the UK's personal-finance communities and built the answers. New calculators: the £100k childcare cliff (the 60% zone plus the support cliff at £100,001, and the pension contribution that often costs less than nothing), student loan overpayment (simulated to write-off — for most Plan 2 borrowers the honest answer is don't), your personal safe withdrawal rate (solved by projection, not asserted at 4%), the ISA bridge for early retirement (with pensions locked until they legally unlock), and debt payoff (avalanche vs snowball, with the difference priced). Three guides join them: the childcare cliff in full, inheriting money — the order of operations, and what a defined benefit pension is actually worth. And the Cashflow tab's insight rail now prices 'one more year': what one extra working year adds to your sustainable annual spending, from the same solver that draws the safe-to-spend line. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-three-life-event-calculators-and-five-new-guides https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-three-life-event-calculators-and-five-new-guides Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The catalogue reaches 34 calculators and 17 guides. New calculators for the moments that compress years of tax planning into weeks: redundancy pay (the £30,000 exemption, the excess at real bands with the 60% trap flagged, and what paying it into your pension saves), care costs (the same figures the app's longevity scenarios charge, compounded at care inflation, with the £23,250 means test explained), and downsizing (capital freed after honest moving costs, priced as lifetime income). Five guides join them: pensions and inheritance tax from April 2027 — the biggest pension rule change in a decade, and why the old 'spend the pension last' doctrine no longer follows; which account to spend first in retirement; drawing retirement income as a couple (the coordination dividend the Household tab computes); the £10,000 MPAA trap; and the redundancy tax playbook. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-eight-more-free-calculators-the-catalogue-reaches-31 https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-eight-more-free-calculators-the-catalogue-reaches-31 Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The final push to the most comprehensive free UK calculator catalogue we know of, all engine-backed: when can I retire (the app's own solver testing each candidate age with a full projection), self-employed tax (bands plus Class 4 NI, with the Class 2 abolition explained), rental income tax (including the April-2027 +2pp property surcharge almost no calculator models yet), marriage allowance (both sides of the transfer priced, not just the £252 headline), the pension tax-free lump sum (PCLS up front vs UFPLS slice-by-slice, under the £268,275 cap), investment bond gains (HMRC top-slicing done properly, onshore and offshore), the Lifetime ISA (25% bonus projected to 60, with the withdrawal penalty priced honestly at 6.25% of your own money), and mortgage repayments (the full amortisation, with the interest share most lenders don't lead with). https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-ten-more-free-calculators-23-in-all https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-ten-more-free-calculators-23-in-all Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The catalogue reaches twenty-three, every one running on the same engine as the full plan: take-home pay (with your true marginal rate, 62% zone included), bonus tax, dividend tax on the April-2026 rates, the child benefit £60k–£80k clawback (and the pension contribution that restores it), student loans as the graduate tax they really are, pension projection with the fee drag priced, remortgaging with the term trap flagged, equity release with the compounding shown honestly, life cover by the transparent DIME method, and a life-expectancy estimator built on the same ONS-based model that sets your plan's horizon. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-six-more-calculators-six-more-guides-and-a-sharper-7-year-ru https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-six-more-calculators-six-more-guides-and-a-sharper-7-year-ru Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The free-tools library doubles: calculators for buying missing NI years (the ~3-year breakeven, after tax), the 7-year gift rule (with the nil-rate-band ordering most explanations miss), mortgage overpaying vs investing (both routes' end wealth, compared without double-counting), how much you need to retire (solved by the real projection, not 25×), capital gains tax (gains stacked on income, as the law works), and pension carry-forward (each prior year tapered on its own income). Six guides join them, from sequence-of-returns risk told through real market history to care home fees. Building the 7-year calculator also caught and fixed an engine kindness: taper relief was being granted on gifts the nil-rate band already sheltered — the statutory rule is narrower, and the engine, Methodology page and Inheritance tab now apply it exactly. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-three-more-free-calculators-four-more-guides https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-three-more-free-calculators-four-more-guides Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The free-tools side of the site grows: an annuity calculator (indicative market rates with the real cost of spouse provision, guarantees, inflation-linking and enhanced health rates), a State Pension deferral calculator (the statutory ~5.8% a year uplift against the income you give up, with your honest breakeven age), and a FIRE calculator (Lean, Regular and Fat FI numbers plus Coast FI, on exactly the definitions the app's FIRE card uses). Alongside them, four new guides: the 60% tax trap between £100,000 and £125,140, UFPLS vs drawdown vs annuity, State Pension deferral, and FIRE in the UK — every load-bearing figure pinned against the engine's own functions so a rule change can't leave a page stale. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-couples-the-coordinated-drawdown-what-if https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-couples-the-coordinated-drawdown-what-if Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Household tab can now answer the question adviser software answers: what if you drew retirement income as one household instead of two individuals? Switch on the what-if and every shared retirement year's draw is split across both partners cheapest-taxable-pound-first — filling both personal allowances and both basic-rate bands, with the balancing cash moved between you (tax-free between spouses) — all through the same per-person tax engine as every other number. You see the tax saved in like-for-like years, any spending the uncoordinated plans couldn't fund that coordination rescues, and the net-worth difference at plan end, each stated honestly and separately. A pattern, not advice: coordinating changes whose name the wealth sits in. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-explanations-off-now-really-clears-the-screen https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-07-explanations-off-now-really-clears-the-screen Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Settings → Explanations preference now governs far more of the app's helper text. The Overview's reality check keeps its score and one factual line while its explanation folds away; the risk-tab introduction, income-strategy and drawdown descriptions, estate-lever notes, plan-insight framing and a dozen other explanatory paragraphs now follow the setting too. What never hides: your figures, verdicts, warnings, honesty caveats and every 'this is education, not advice' line. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-06-plan-insights-what-your-projection-already-knows https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-06-plan-insights-what-your-projection-already-knows Sun, 06 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Cashflow tab gains an insights rail — engine-true observations in the spirit of the best budgeting apps, at lifetime scale: what cash growing below inflation costs you in real terms each year, the years your plan holds money outside tax wrappers while ISA allowance goes unused (with the dividend tax that costs, as a floor), and what your investment charges add up to across the plan — or an honest nudge if you're modelling a zero-cost portfolio, which no real portfolio is. Every figure comes from your own projection and stated assumptions; nothing is a recommendation. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-05-broken-references-are-now-called-out-events-mortgage-links-l https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-05-broken-references-are-now-called-out-events-mortgage-links-l Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Delete an account that a planned event draws from and the plan used to fall back to general funds silently. Now the event is flagged in red where you edit it — naming the missing account — and the Overview shows a warning above your goals until the event points somewhere real again. The same audit covers the rest of your plan: a mortgage linked to a deleted property, an overpayment aimed at a deleted mortgage (which silently did nothing), and a tax-free lump sum destined for a deleted account — which the engine used to quietly reroute into a different account, and now honestly treats as spent, with a warning telling you so. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-05-a-switch-for-backup-file-encryption https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-05-a-switch-for-backup-file-encryption Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Backup files — the automatic backup and manual exports — are AES-256-encrypted by default, and Settings now has a clear on/off switch instead of a passphrase prompt on every save. Turning it off saves plain, readable files (with a warning, and the connected backup file is rewritten immediately either way). Adviser sharing is not affected: it stays end-to-end encrypted regardless — that promise is not optional. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-05-the-lifetime-cost-lens-what-each-expense-line-really-costs https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-05-the-lifetime-cost-lens-what-each-expense-line-really-costs Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Expenses tab now prices every itemised line the way a lifetime plan should: your full plan re-run with that one line switched off, showing the payments plus everything they would have compounded into by the end of your plan — on your own growth, tax and drawdown rules, not a rule-of-thumb formula. A price tag, not a verdict: spending on what matters is what the plan is for. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-05-cashflow-a-safe-to-spend-line-and-your-tightest-year https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-05-cashflow-a-safe-to-spend-line-and-your-tightest-year Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The cashflow chart now draws your sustainable spending level — the most you could spend in retirement and still fund every year, phased exactly like your own plan — against what you actually plan to spend, so the gap between the lines is your headroom at a glance. It also marks the plan's tightest year: where your accessible funds bottom out, and by how much. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-04-a-slicker-what-if-success-rates-and-spotlighting-in-scenario https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-04-a-slicker-what-if-success-rates-and-spotlighting-in-scenario Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The saved-scenario comparison now shows each scenario's Monte Carlo success rate beside net worth and money-lasts — every plan tested on the same market paths so the ranking is fair — and the overlay chart gained spotlight and hide controls, so comparing five scenarios no longer means reading spaghetti. Headline figures across the app now ease to their new values as you drag sliders, views show a live 'running the simulations' state instead of going blank, empty tabs now explain what they'll become with one button to the right place, and chart readouts pin to the top on phones so your finger never covers them. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-03-couples-tax-opportunities-between-your-two-plans https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-03-couples-tax-opportunities-between-your-two-plans Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Couples tab now spots where a couple's two tax positions leave money on the table — an unclaimed marriage allowance, pension contributions that would earn more relief routed through the higher earner, and retirement years where one partner's personal allowance sits unused. Each observation is computed from your own plans and quantified where it honestly can be; the projection itself never re-routes money between you. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-03-two-more-free-calculators-salary-sacrifice-and-isa-vs-pensio https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-03-two-more-free-calculators-salary-sacrifice-and-isa-vs-pensio Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Both run on the app's real tax-band and National Insurance functions, entirely in your browser: the salary sacrifice calculator shows what a pension contribution really costs (including the 60% relief zone between £100k and £125,140 and any employer NI pass-on), and the ISA-vs-pension comparison settles the classic question on your actual numbers. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-03-the-stress-test-now-taxes-pension-drawdown https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-03-the-stress-test-now-taxes-pension-drawdown Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Each simulated year's pension withdrawal is now grossed up for the income tax due on it, exactly as the main projection does — so a net spending need costs the simulation what it really costs. Success rates read honestly lower as a result (the demo plan drops from 64% to around 48%), and the historical backtest tightens for the same reason, with tax bands tracking each replayed era's price level the way income already did. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-02-life-care-scenarios-now-run-through-the-full-engine https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-02-life-care-scenarios-now-run-through-the-full-engine Wed, 02 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Stress Test tab's four life-length and care scenarios used to be projected by a simplified untaxed model whose end-of-plan figures could sit far above the main projection's. Each scenario is now your actual plan re-projected by the same engine as every other number in the app — same tax, pensions, drawdown order and events — and 'runs out' honestly flags any year whose spending can't be funded. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-02-a-cleaner-look-crisp-icons-softer-cards-clearer-verdicts https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-02-a-cleaner-look-crisp-icons-softer-cards-clearer-verdicts Wed, 02 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT The app now uses one consistent set of crisp line icons throughout — navigation, page titles and card headers — instead of mixed emoji that render differently on every device. Goal cards state their verdict in plain FUNDED / AT RISK labels, and cards across the app get softer corners and shadows. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-01-the-site-grows-up-calculators-guides-and-the-app-guide https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-09-01-the-site-grows-up-calculators-guides-and-the-app-guide Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT hundredsummers.co.uk is now a real multi-page site: free in-browser calculators for pension drawdown and inheritance tax, plain-English guides, the full app walkthrough with narrated videos at /help/, and standalone pricing and tools pages — all linked from a proper navigation bar. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-31-historical-backtest-your-plan-through-every-market-since-192 https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-31-historical-backtest-your-plan-through-every-market-since-192 Mon, 31 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Stress Test tab now replays your full plan through every rolling window of market history from 1928 to 2023 — the 1929 crash, the 1966–81 inflation grind, the 2000s lost decade — and shows exactly which historical start years your plan would have survived. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-31-choose-your-simulation-count-up-to-10-000-paths https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-31-choose-your-simulation-count-up-to-10-000-paths Mon, 31 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT A new Plan Assumption sets how many Monte Carlo paths the stress test runs (default 500, up to 10,000). The default is already statistically stable; raising it sharpens the tail percentiles. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-30-methodology-published-in-full https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-30-methodology-published-in-full Sun, 30 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Every assumption behind the projections — tax rules, growth defaults, the market model, the backtest — is now public at /methodology.html, generated from the same code that runs the app. No other planning tool publishes its assumptions. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-25-goals-timeline-likelihoods-and-what-would-fix-it https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-25-goals-timeline-likelihoods-and-what-would-fix-it Tue, 25 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT The Overview's goals now show a timeline of when each goal needs money, how often each was funded across the market simulations, exactly where the money comes from, and — for anything off track — the specific change that would fix it. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-21-accounts-always-carry-an-explicit-tax-wrapper https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-21-accounts-always-carry-an-explicit-tax-wrapper Fri, 21 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Every savings account now shows and stores its tax wrapper explicitly (ISA, GIA, cash, bonds, EIS/VCT…) instead of the engine inferring one — and when in doubt, the engine now assumes taxable, never tax-free. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-17-advisers-can-propose-changes-clients-accept-or-reject https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-17-advisers-can-propose-changes-clients-accept-or-reject Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT An adviser can send a proposed plan back to their client, end-to-end encrypted. The client sees an itemised diff of every change and explicitly accepts or rejects it — nothing touches their plan without their say-so. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-16-every-planned-expense-says-exactly-where-the-money-comes-fro https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-16-every-planned-expense-says-exactly-where-the-money-comes-fro Sun, 16 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Goal cards now break funding down — '£20k from the year's income, £150k drawn from your ISA' — using the engine's own ledger of what actually moved, and honestly flag anything the plan cannot fund when it falls due. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-12-a-far-more-realistic-market-model https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-12-a-far-more-realistic-market-model Wed, 12 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT The stress test's simulated markets now move together like real ones: correlated equity, bond and property returns with fat-tailed shocks, and inflation that persists once it takes hold — validated against a century of market history. Success rates are more honest (and typically lower) than before. https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-05-fees-income-shocks-and-target-allocations https://hundredsummers.co.uk/whats-new.html#2026-08-05-fees-income-shocks-and-target-allocations Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per-account charges now drag on growth with a cost-of-fees comparison; income protection policies can be stress-tested against a loss-of-earnings scenario; and your risk profile suggests a target asset allocation to compare against what you actually hold.