Help Centre/Tutorials/How to add life events

How to add life events

3 min read

Summary

Life Events model one-off or recurring future expenses — gifts, big purchases, school fees, or life goals — deducted from your portfolio in the year(s) they occur.
Tick "This repeats" to have an event recur at a set interval, optionally until a given age.
Tick "Track for inheritance tax planning" on a gift to include it in the IHT tab's 7-year taper calculation.
Exemptions vary by recipient: spouse/civil partner and charity are fully exempt; children, grandchildren, and others have marriage gift allowances and are otherwise subject to the 7-year taper.

Steps

1. Add a life event with a name, icon, amount (in today's money), and the year or age it occurs.

2. Choose whether it's inflation-adjusted (grows with inflation) or a fixed £ amount.

3. For a recurring cost — school fees, an annual gift, regular help with a grandchild's expenses — tick This repeats, set how often (in years), and optionally an age to stop at. Leave the stop age blank to have it repeat for the rest of your plan.

4. If it's a gift, tick Track for inheritance tax planning to include it in the IHT tab's 7-year taper calculation.

5. Select the recipient — Child, Grandchild, Spouse / Civil Partner, Charity, or Other — each has different exemption rules.

6. For a marriage or civil partnership gift to a child or grandchild, tick the marriage gift option to apply the higher allowance (£5,000 for a child, £2,500 for a grandchild), exempt from the taper.

Example scenarios

"I want to give my daughter £20,000 towards a house deposit"

Add a Life Event, enter the amount and the year, tick "Track for inheritance tax planning", and set the recipient to Child. If it's a wedding gift, £5,000 is exempt from the taper; otherwise the full amount falls under the 7-year taper, so it only leaves your estate for IHT purposes once you've survived 7 years from the gift date.

"I'm leaving money to my spouse"

Set the recipient to Spouse / Civil Partner. Transfers between spouses and civil partners are fully exempt from Inheritance Tax regardless of timing, so this life event won't affect your IHT tab estate figure at all.

"I want to model paying my grandchild's school fees every year until they turn 18"

Add a Life Event for the annual fee amount, tick This repeats, set it to every 1 year, and set the stop age to your grandchild's age at 18 (calculated from today's date and their birth year). Each payment reduces your projected wealth in the year it happens.

Note: if you also tick Track for inheritance tax planning on a recurring event, only its first occurrence is counted as a gift in the IHT tab's 7-year taper — later recurrences reduce your wealth projection but aren't separately tracked as additional gifts. For a recurring gift you want fully reflected in the IHT taper, add each year as its own one-off Life Event instead.

Frequently asked questions

Do Life Events affect my main wealth projection, or just the IHT tab?

They're deducted from your portfolio in the simulation year they occur, so they reduce your projected wealth from that point onward — not just the IHT estate figure.

Can a life event repeat, or is it always one-off?

Tick "This repeats" and set an interval (e.g. every year, or every 5 years) and an optional end age. Leave the end age blank to have it repeat for the rest of your plan.

What are the marriage gift allowances?

£5,000 per parent for a child, £2,500 per grandparent for a grandchild, and £1,000 per person for others — these amounts are exempt from the 7-year taper when the gift is for a marriage or civil partnership.

Are gifts to charity taxed?

No — gifts to charity are fully exempt, and leaving 10%+ of your estate to charity can reduce your overall IHT rate from 40% to 36%.