Life gets better when you know
what you’re doing….with giltedge !

You may have noticed the "Coming Soon" banner on the homepage for the 4-Decades Financial Planning App.
Well, soon is now. Sort of.

The app has a name — GiltEdge — and it's live. You can use it today. But before I throw it open to everyone, I'm looking for around twenty 4-Decades readers to give it a proper kicking and tell me what's good, what's bad, and what's missing.

Why I built it

Like most men in our age bracket, I've spent years staring at spreadsheets trying to answer the same handful of questions. Have I got enough? When can I stop working? What happens if the markets wobble? How do I draw down my pension without giving HMRC more than I have to?

Spreadsheets get you part of the way. But they don't show you the shape of your future — the years where things tighten, the points where decisions matter, the impact of taking the tax-free lump sum now vs later.

GiltEdge does. You enter what you've got — cash, savings, investments, pensions, property — and what's coming in and going out. It projects forward, year by year, as far as you want to look. You can see whether your plan holds water. You can change one number and watch the whole picture move.

It's plain English. It's mobile-first. It's built for men in the second half who want to understand their money, not be lectured about it.

What "beta" means

GiltEdge is real, working software, deployed and secure. It's not a mockup. But it's version one — which means there will be rough edges, missing features, things that don't behave the way you'd expect. That's exactly why I want testers.

Beta testers get:

• Free access for the entire beta period

• A direct line to me to flag bugs, suggest features, or just tell me when something's confusing

• A say in what version two looks like — the best ideas usually come from the people actually using the thing

• Free access to the launch edition when GiltEdge goes paid (this is already in the 4-Decades subscriber offer, so beta testers from the subscriber base get this twice over)

What I'm asking

Half an hour of your time, on and off, over the next few weeks. Enter your numbers. Have a poke around. Tell me what you think.

If you're up for it, drop me a line at info@4-decades.com with the subject line "GiltEdge beta" and I'll send you the link.

A small ask: be honest. "Looks great!" is kind but it doesn't help me. "I couldn't work out how to add my workplace pension" — that helps enormously.

All the best !

— Craig

PS - Beta 2 is here !! NOW Beta 3!!

"Beta 2 brings the engine to life: pension drawdowns now properly debit the pots they come from, tax is applied to drawdowns and investment withdrawals (with ISA exemption), and depletion events surface when pots run out. Plus a sweep of UX polish — retire confirmations, clearer validation, totals on every asset page, bigger nav icons, and a Settings shortcut to Assumptions."

Beta 3 has so much more - and our engine is more sophisticated with things liek a tax module …check it out