Retirement Cashflow Methodology

A failed test changes the recommendation. It is not simply disclosed.

The Retirement Cashflow Methodology is a controlled framework for using cashflow to make retirement-planning decisions.

It separates client facts, assumptions, strategy, implementation research and the advised plan rather than allowing them to become blurred inside a single projection.

Its core sequence is:

Feasibility → Current → Strategy → Research → Advised → Grade

Only the advised trajectory is graded.

A plan must fund validated expenditure and committed objectives, meet its liquidity and execution requirements, and remain viable without relying on rescue assumptions. Where the required standard is not met, the answer is to redesign the strategy rather than attach a warning to the forecast.

What the methodology tests

The framework governs the areas that can materially change a retirement decision, and tests each according to the decision it could change. For example:

• a market fall from the point where the plan is most exposed, without assuming a compensating rebound;
• whether near-term income can be paid without forced sales of impaired assets;
• the surviving partner's position after a first death;
• whether a gift or other irreversible decision still leaves a credible way to pay for care.

Risks are not simply stacked into one pessimistic scenario; each is tested against the decision it affects.

The methodology also places boundaries around what the model may conclude. Missing evidence is not silently replaced with an assumption. Cases outside the supported methodology are not forced to produce an answer.

Assumptions and governance

The methodology is proposition-neutral.

Its decision rules are separated from live numerical assumptions and statutory data. Adopting advisers or firms govern their own controlled assumptions, while legislation and other external inputs can be updated without rewriting the underlying framework.

The same governance applies whether analysis is performed manually or with AI assistance. Human or machine may execute the process; neither determines the rules.

Technical foundation

The Technical Methodology & Evidence Manual is the underlying reference document. It records the reasoning and evidence behind the methodology, the boundaries between evidence and judgement, and the controls required for implementation.

The methodology is currently being tested against a separately built reference implementation and a blind test corpus before publication.

First edition · 2026