We are truly delighted with the feedback and questions we receive from you all and in most cases we are able to offer a LifePlan solution to the financial events that you wish to plot. 

From this feedback, we have put together some useful tips which hopefully will help you if you wish to plot a new scenario or if you are simply updating your LifePlan.  So, this is the first of an occasional series of Helpful Guides & Tips

Tip 1 – Final Salary / Define Benefit Cash Lump Sums

A number of you have asked where to put your expected cash lump sums derived from a Defined Benefit / Final Salary pension plan?.  

As you will have gathered only the pension income is entered under the ‘Final Salary’ section.  The cash lump sum is entered under Tab 6. Income > Expected Future Income > lump sum amount > set as tax-free

Tip 2 – Expected Future Income & Future Costs

 When we designed LifePlan we expected that there would be many financial events and circumstances that you may wish to plan for that were individual but possibly non-standard so would not fit within any of the other LifePlan fields. This is where Expected Future Income (Tab 6 > Income > Expected Future Income) is very useful as here you may plot a virtually endless range of lump sum or regular income scenarios that you may be expecting e.g. potential legacies, trust income and as described in Tip 1, cash lump sums from final salary pension plans.

Future costs is equally as useful and here you may plot lump sum or regular amounts of future expenditure such as a houses deposit for a family member, school fess or a big ticket item such as a car purchase or cruise.

 Tip 3 – Fixed & Variable Expenses

It is important to note that these sections have no interaction with your LifePlan through the years.  We have included these sections to help you list your current expense items and the LifePlan Expenditure chart shows your annual disposable income which is your selected Desired Annual Income less the total of the expenditure items.