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Optiml Strategy
Maximise Retirement Spending
Live your best retirement. Spend more, worry less, never run out.
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What is this strategy?
Maximise Retirement Spending
The Maximise Spending strategy is for people who have saved their whole lives and now want to enjoy it. Instead of the default 4% rule, which often leaves tens of thousands on the table, Optiml calculates the maximum sustainable income you can draw every year, from every account, in the right order. You get more money to spend every year.
The Optimizer
Optiml does not follow an order. It tests everything.
There is no preset withdrawal order. Every possible combination of deposits and withdrawals is evaluated against your specific financial plan.
What Maximize Spending Actually Means
Spend it all. Without running out.
This strategy is built around one idea: drawing your investments down to zero by the end of your plan. Not recklessly, but optimally. The goal is to enjoy every dollar you saved, in the most tax-efficient way possible, without spending too much too early or too little too late.
Optiml starts with your base after-tax income needs and then calculates your Surplus Spending on top of that. Say you need £50,000 a year after tax. If your plan can support £70,000, that is a £20,000 surplus every single year that is yours to spend.
You also control when that surplus applies. You may want to spend more in your active early retirement years but expect less need after age 80. Set your Surplus Spending window and Optiml builds your entire withdrawal strategy around it.
This is not about spending recklessly.
It is about building an optimal withdrawal strategy that triggers the least amount of tax, so that every dollar you saved gets to be enjoyed by you.
Base Expenses + Surplus Spending
Base Expenses
Surplus Spending
Drag the sliders to adjust your surplus spending window
Plan Start
50
Surplus Begins
58
Surplus Ends
78
Life Expectancy
85
Illustrative example. Your actual surplus spending depends on your accounts, income needs, age, and goals. Never a template.
Under the Hood
The question is not how much you have. It is how much you can actually spend.
Every retirement plan has a maximum sustainable spending level - the highest after-tax income you can draw without running short before the end of your plan. Finding that number is not straightforward. It depends on your account mix, tax situation, State Pension timing, investment growth, and the specific window of years you want to spend in.
Optiml's non-linear optimizer solves for that number directly. Rather than picking a spending amount and checking if it works, the engine searches for the highest sustainable surplus - in the most tax-efficient withdrawal sequence possible - across your chosen window.
Without any adjustment, the optimizer would do something mathematically obvious but practically useless: defer all surplus spending to the very last year. The longer money stays invested, the more it grows - so a pure maximizer would always prefer to spend later. To prevent this, future surplus is discounted by your expected portfolio growth rate, making earlier spending count for more in the objective and producing a plan that actually reflects how and when you want to spend.
The Objective
The optimizer maximizes the present value of all surplus spending within your chosen window, discounting future years by your expected portfolio growth rate:
Maximise: ∑ₜ [ Surplus_t · (1/(1+g))ᵗ ]
t = year index within the surplus window
Surplus_t = above-base spending in year t
g = expected portfolio growth rate
The discount rate is derived from your portfolio's expected returns. A pound of surplus spending in Year 1 of your window is worth more in the objective than a pound in Year 10 - counteracting the optimizer's natural tendency to defer all spending to the end of the plan.
Every path must satisfy one principal constraint
Your income from all sources, minus all taxes, living expenses, goals, and deposits, must net to exactly zero each year. No path is accepted that leaves you short of what you need to live.
Income - Taxes - Expenses - Goals - Deposits = 0
Outside your surplus window this constraint holds exactly as written. Inside the window, surplus spending becomes part of the equation - the constraint instead ensures that all remaining funds after taxes, base expenses, goals, and deposits make up surplus spending, and that surplus must be positive:
Income - Taxes - Base Expenses - Goals - Deposits = Surplus ≥ 0
Worth knowing before you choose this strategy
This strategy aims to draw your liquid investments to zero by the end of your plan - but a few situations can leave a residual balance:
Short surplus window. If your spending window ends before the analysis period, and your base income still covers expenses in the remaining years, the excess cash has to go somewhere. Because the constraint above must hold every year, Optiml will deposit that surplus into your accounts rather than let it disappear - which can leave a residual balance at end of plan.
Restricted access accounts. Pensions can only be accessed from age 55 (rising to 57 in April 2028), and a Lifetime ISA can't be withdrawn before age 60 without penalty. If a meaningful portion of your portfolio is in these wrappers, Optiml may not be able to fully drain your liquid assets to zero by the final year, regardless of the strategy chosen.
If leaving a meaningful amount for your beneficiaries matters to you, the Max Value strategy targets a specific estate balance while still delivering strong spending power throughout retirement.
The result is a precise, year-by-year withdrawal plan: the maximum surplus amount your plan can support, across the exact window you chose, with full account-level detail on every pound drawn.
Is this strategy right for you?
Perfect Fit
Who This Strategy Is For
You do not want to leave an estate behind
You want to spend it all and die with zero
You want to know exactly how much you can spend each year
May Not Be Right If...
This Strategy May Not Be For You
You want to leave money behind for your beneficiaries
You do not want to spend more than you need each year
Ready to maximise your retirement spending?
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