Scenarios vs MyFinanceFuture: A UK Retirement Planning Comparison

The Short Answer

MyFinanceFuture (myfinancefuture.com, not to be confused with the similarly named myfinancialfuture.uk) is a UK financial planning tool built around the idea of an "Affordable Advice Gap": it lets you build a detailed plan across income, pensions, property, and inheritance, then manually test that plan against named scenarios like a market downturn, early redundancy, or unexpected expenses. Each test produces one adjusted version of the same single projection.

Scenarios takes a different approach to the same underlying question. Rather than building one plan and manually pressure-testing it against a handful of named scenarios, it runs 1,000 Monte Carlo simulations across plausible sequences of investment returns and inflation, and reports a probability of success across the full range of outcomes.

Both are UK-focused and both model UK tax in some depth. The core difference is deterministic versus probabilistic: one plan tested by hand, or a distribution of a thousand.

How Does Scenarios Compare to MyFinanceFuture?

This is drawn from MyFinanceFuture's public marketing and pricing pages, not verified internals. Check their site for their current feature set.

Why Choose Scenarios Over MyFinanceFuture?

MyFinanceFuture's Premium tier is genuinely broad on the tax side, covering Income Tax, National Insurance, Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance Tax. The main gap between the two tools isn't tax coverage; it's method:

• A probability of success, not a plan you stress-test by hand. 1,000 simulated market paths produce a fan chart from the 5th to 95th percentile. A deterministic tool shows you what happens in the specific scenarios you think to test; a Monte Carlo model shows you the range across thousands of paths you didn't think to check.
• A tax-optimised withdrawal order. Every simulated year draws down through a seven-tier waterfall (guaranteed income, tax-free cash, pension income up to the personal allowance, ISA, remaining pension, GIA, cash) rather than a manually chosen structure.
• Correlated asset returns. Seven asset classes generated through a calibrated correlation matrix via Cholesky decomposition, so a mixed portfolio's diversification benefit comes from the maths rather than an assumption.
• Pension-specific allowances. The Annual Allowance, Money Purchase Annual Allowance and Lump Sum Allowance are tracked explicitly, alongside PCLS and UFPLS withdrawal methods.
• A reproducible answer. The random seed comes from a hash of your plan's inputs, so the same plan always returns the same result.
• Published methodology. Every assumption is documented on the methodology page, with the mechanics of the simulation engine covered in Understanding Monte Carlo Simulations.

What MyFinanceFuture Does Well

A deterministic plan you can manually stress-test has a real advantage: it's easy to follow. You can see exactly which input changed and exactly how the outcome moved, without a probability distribution to interpret. For someone who wants a single, detailed baseline plan across income, property and inheritance, and is comfortable manually checking it against a market downturn or a redundancy, that directness is a reasonable way to work.

Is Scenarios Free Like MyFinanceFuture?

Both offer a free tier. MyFinanceFuture's Basic tier covers an outline plan and summary projections, with full tax calculations and inheritance tax planning reserved for the £95/year Premium tier. Scenarios' free tier covers the core Monte Carlo simulation, fan chart, and median wealth projection, with full tax precision, interactive what-if sliders, and the withdrawal strategy optimiser on paid plans from £72/year. Full detail is on the pricing page.

This is methodology, not financial advice, and Scenarios isn't authorised to provide regulated advice. You can build a free plan and see how your own numbers hold up across a 1,000-run simulation rather than a single projection.