Risk reality calculator
Two questions nobody enjoys: what are the odds, and how long would the money hold? Public data answers the first. Your own numbers answer the second.
These figures are an illustration built from published national statistics, not a personal recommendation. Your own health, occupation, circumstances and any cover you already hold will change the picture, which is what a conversation is for.
The odds are worked out from the Office for National Statistics national life tables for the UK, 2022 to 2024, the same public mortality data actuaries start from. They are averages for your age and sex, not a verdict on your health or lifestyle. The lifetime serious illness figure is Cancer Research UK's estimate of lifetime cancer risk. The runway is arithmetic on your own numbers. None of it is advice or a prediction about you.
Why this number matters
The first number is deliberately real: it comes from the public life tables the whole industry builds on, and for most working people it is smaller than they fear. The second number is usually the uncomfortable one. The month your own money runs out is a date, and everything after that date is somebody else's decision about your life.
The odds are shorter than they feel. Cancer Research UK estimates that nearly one in two of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lives, and most working households know someone who has been off for months with an illness or injury that had nothing to do with their job. Long absences are normal. Budgets that survive them are not.
Cover is how the date moves. Income protection replaces part of your pay for as long as you cannot work, critical illness cover pays a lump sum when a serious diagnosis lands, and life cover deals with the version of events nobody wants to plan for. Which of them matters most depends on the number this page just showed you.
What sits around the number
Statutory sick pay
There is a statutory safety net, but it is a fraction of most households' outgoings and it does not last indefinitely. If your budget depends on it, the runway is shorter than this page shows.
A partner's income
A second income stretches the runway, and it also doubles the number of people the household depends on. It is worth running the numbers both ways round.
Cutting back
Real households cut spending hard when income stops. Some costs go quickly; the mortgage, the bills and the food do not. The gap shrinks, but it rarely closes.
The business
If you own the company, one absence can hit both sides at once: the household loses its income while the business loses the person who generates it. Key person and shareholder cover exist for exactly this.
Try the others
Retirement shortfall
Whether the saving matches the ambition, with the gap shown in pounds.
Retirement shortfall calculatorCompound interest
What regular saving turns into when growth earns growth.
Compound interest calculatorUse the result as a starting point.
Knowing the date is the easy half. Choosing the right cover, the right amounts and the right ownership is where it earns its keep.
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