The Spare Key
Start from a sealed Exit File. If the first years put the plan under pressure, this page prices the one change you would actually make: what it hands back in money, what it costs you in the life, and when you would decide. You choose it and seal it, dated, while nothing is wrong.
Explain it like I’m five
A plan can hit rough years right at the start. This page takes the plan you sealed and prices one change you could make if that happens, like spending less for a while. You pick one change, see exactly what it gives back, and write down when you would look.
New to all of it? Start from zero: ten short lessons that assume nothing.
A spare key for the plan, not for an account. Nothing here touches passwords, sign-in or anyone's access to anything: it is the retirement fallback you would use if the early years bite, priced in plain arithmetic and written down.
Not a forecast or an automatic guardrail.
What this calculates, and what it refuses to
What it calculates
- Withdrawals avoided: a spending reduction or net earnings, times its months. Exact integer arithmetic on the File's own figures; no return term anywhere.
- A later exit: the withdrawals that never start plus the contributions that continue, at the File's numbers. Growth or loss during the delay is deliberately left out, and the receipt says which way that leans on your File.
- Counting less later income: this File's own arithmetic re-run at a lower count, and the additional starting margin it demands at the same month.
- Every amount is also shown as months of the ordinary spending in this File. That is an equivalence against your own spending line, never a promised runway.
What it does not calculate
- Whether markets recover, or when.
- Tax, net pay, or whether temporary work is available.
- Whether your spending can fall without harm.
- Probabilities, thresholds or advice.
- A combined effect of primary and backup: they are alternatives, never added.
How choosing works
- The four options render in one fixed order, never sorted by size.
- No option is ranked, scored or recommended. The amounts are arithmetic; the choice is yours.
- You write the condition and pick the review month. The site stores them, quotes them back exactly, and never interprets or monitors either.
Flexible withdrawal rules are a recognised category in retirement-income research, and a written when-and-how plan is an established, studied format. None of that research studied this page. What you get here is arithmetic you can check, and a choice you made before it was needed.
Where this hands off
The Key stands on one sealed Exit File. The plan itself, its corridor and its next checkable fact live there. The Exit File
The risk this prepares for has its own page: The First Bad Decade shows what the order of returns does to two identical averages. The First Bad Decade
The order of operations for an actual bad stretch belongs to Living off it: do nothing, live on the buffer, trim, sell small. The guide runs the machine; the Key prices one change in advance. Living off it
If you cannot name a reduction you would defend, price the life first: the yearly total and the lines inside it are that page's job. Price the Life
Nothing to sell
No affiliate links. No paywall. Nothing on this page is for sale, and nobody pays me to steer your answer.
Not advice
A fallback you chose, priced by arithmetic: not a forecast or advice, and no promise an option will work. Nothing here knows whether a change would be available, affordable or right for you; the choice and its review stay yours.
Common questions
- Is this predicting a bad market?
- No. Nothing here forecasts returns, orders or dates. The reason the page exists is smaller: the order of returns interacts with withdrawals, so the early years carry more weight than the average, and this page is for doing the thinking before one of those stretches arrives, not during it. What the market will actually do is not in the file.
- Why does it need a sealed Exit File?
- Because a fallback priced against a moving draft ages ambiguously: you would never know which plan the promise was made against. A sealed File holds still. The Key freezes the minimum it needs from it, names the version, and can always tell you exactly what it was priced on.
- Why does it not tell me which option is best?
- The amounts share a unit; the lives behind them don’t. Three months more work, a year on €300 less and a higher starting target can price out alike and cost you completely different things. I can do the arithmetic for you. I won’t pretend arithmetic can rank what each one takes out of a life: that part is yours.
- What does “months of the ordinary spending in this File” mean?
- The amount divided by one month of the spending in your sealed File. It is a ruler for comparing unlike options, nothing more. It does not say the money lasts that many months longer; how long anything lasts depends on returns this page refuses to guess.
- Does temporary income include tax?
- You enter the net amount that would actually reach the life, and the page takes your word for it. Nothing here calculates tax, and nothing checks that the work exists. If the net is uncertain, enter the number you would defend.
- Why is earned income capped at the spending in my File?
- Because this version prices one thing: withdrawals that don’t happen. Money above your monthly spending would be new investing, which is a different calculation with different claims. Rather than quietly blur the two, the page stops at the cap.
- Why are primary and backup not added together?
- Because the backup is what you would do if the primary is not available, not a second step on top of it. Adding them would price a plan you never made. The two stay separate everywhere: on this page, in the file, on the printed sheet.
- What if none of these options is realistic?
- Then the honest result is no sealed Key, and the page will never push you past that. Two doors are better than a forced choice here: the File, if the plan itself needs rework, and Living off it, which owns the review where this would actually come up.
- Can it monitor my condition or remind me?
- No. The site does not watch markets, balances or the calendar, and it does not read your condition: it stores the sentence and quotes it back. The review month is a promise you keep, which is exactly why it is yours and written in your words.
- What happens when I update my Exit File?
- Nothing, silently. The Key stays tied to the File it was sealed against and says so. When a newer File exists, the Key shows “Built from an earlier File” and offers a fresh start against the current one; you choose, and the old Key stays exactly as sealed.
- Can I use it without an account?
- Yes, completely. The Key lives in this browser and in the JSON you download; printing works the same. An account only lets a Key you choose to keep follow you to another device.
- Is the JSON encrypted?
- No. It is plain text, readable by anyone who has the file, and it contains your File baseline, your amounts and your condition. Store and share it as you would a financial document.
- Is this the same as account recovery or giving someone access?
- No. Nothing on this page opens an account, recovers a password or gives anyone access to anything. The name means a fallback for the plan, made while it isn’t needed. For sign-in help, this is the wrong page; nothing about your account lives here.
The fallback is chosen. The manual is next door.
Living off it is the operating manual this slots into: the machine of selling, the buffer, and the review your Key's date belongs to.