Soundings.

For years, my retirement planning lived in a spreadsheet. It was unruly, but I still trusted it more than any tool on the market. Soundings is that spreadsheet rebuilt as a web app, updated to reflect the Albanese government’s capital gains tax changes. It lives at soundings.life.

What it is

You list what you own and what you owe: shares, ETFs, crypto, cash, debts, the house, and your super or KiwiSaver. You add incomes, spending, and your retirement age. Soundings then projects your net worth for every year up to age 100, in today’s dollars, with tax, pensions, and drawdowns worked out under each country’s rules. It flags the age you’ll run dry and what you paid in tax along the way.

Listed holdings revalue at live market prices, so your projection reflects what the portfolio is worth now. A tracker stores daily snapshots, so you can watch your position move without touching the assumptions.

Nothing is hidden behind presets. Holdings are added through guided wizards, but every assumption stays editable: return rates, inflation, tax brackets, pension rules, the lot. A retirement tool you can’t interrogate is just a black box.

What’s modelled

The engine runs in your browser and covers the rules that actually bite:

• Australia: marginal tax brackets and the Medicare levy, franking credits, the 50% CGT discount for existing gains, and the new 30% minimum rate on gains from 2027. Super access ages, the $30,000 concessional cap, and the Age Pension assets test.
• New Zealand: income tax brackets, PIE rates, imputation credits, the 5% FDR deemed rate and FIF rules including the proposed $100,000 de minimis, KiwiSaver with the government contribution, and NZ Super with its new residence requirements.

Country by country

Tax is a massive drag on retirement savings, and the rules vary wildly between countries. Contribution caps, earnings taxes, and pension tests are all different. We model Australia and New Zealand properly, side by side in their own tax regimes and currencies, including the trans-Tasman details: what happens when super moves to KiwiSaver and vice versa, and how the social security agreement affects NZ Super.

Other countries may follow, but only once they can be modelled properly rather than bolted on.

Privacy and security

The projection runs entirely in your browser. Nothing leaves your device unless you create an account, and accounts are optional. An account is just a random ID and a passphrase: no email, no name, nothing that connects a projection to a person.

Saved portfolios are end-to-end encrypted before upload, so the server stores ciphertext it cannot read. Lose the passphrase and the data is unrecoverable, by anyone, including me. Deleting your account wipes everything.

The disclaimers

Soundings is a model, and every model is wrong. Markets are uncertain, tax rules change, and life happens. We do our best, but you should talk to a financial advisor or qualified accountant before making decisions based on what you see here. This is a tool for thinking, not financial advice.

Links

• Soundings — the live site.