AI Prompt to Assess Retirement Readiness and Capital Gap

What you need

You need your current investment balances, your ongoing monthly savings rate, and four specific retirement parameters listed below. Distinguish personal investments from home equity, because residential property does not produce spendable income unless you plan to downsize or lease it.

Beyond the standard snapshot block, specify these four inputs directly underneath your financial figures: - Target retirement age: the exact age you intend to step back from paid employment. - Desired annual spending in today's money: your estimated annual living budget expressed in today's purchasing power. - Expected pension or state benefit, annual: your projected state or workplace pension payouts, or write "unknown". - Country of retirement: where you plan to live, which establishes tax and healthcare baselines.

The snapshot block below organizes your asset and liability figures. Copy the template, enter your values, add the four extra inputs, and paste everything with the prompt below.

Here is my financial snapshot. Use only these numbers.

Currency: [e.g. EUR]
Date: [today's date]
Age: [optional]

ASSETS
[name] — [category: cash / stocks / ETFs / crypto / property / metals / other] — [value]
[name] — [category] — [value]
...

LIABILITIES
[name] — [type: mortgage / car loan / credit card / student loan / other] — [outstanding balance] — [interest rate if known]
...

CONTEXT (optional but improves the answer)
Monthly income after tax: [amount]
Monthly spending: [amount]
Amount I add to savings or investments each month: [amount]
Value of the same assets 12 months ago: [amount]

The prompt

Copy this exact text and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini directly beneath your snapshot block.

You are a financial analyst specializing in retirement planning. Using my
snapshot above plus the details below, assess where I stand.

Target retirement age: [age]
Annual spending I want in retirement, in today's money: [amount]
Expected pension or state benefit, annual: [amount or "unknown"]
Country I expect to retire in: [country]

1. Estimate the capital needed to fund that spending, showing your method and the
   withdrawal rate you used. Explain why you chose that rate.
2. Compare it with what I have and what I am adding, and estimate the gap.
3. Show how the gap changes at 3%, 5% and 7% annual real returns.
4. Explain which of your assumptions the answer is most sensitive to.
5. Give me three things I could change, ordered by how much each one moves the gap.

Treat country-specific tax and pension rules as uncertain and say so. Ask for
missing inputs. No product recommendations.

What good output looks like

The output should open with a transparent capital calculation showing your target retirement nest egg. The model calculates net annual withdrawal needs by subtracting your expected state or private pension from your desired annual spending. It then applies a sustainable safe withdrawal rate, such as three and a half or four percent based on your retirement horizon, showing the exact multiplication used to determine the total capital requirement.

The model should then compare this capital goal with your current assets and ongoing monthly additions. It projects your existing portfolio balance forward to your retirement age, subtracting the projected total from the target to show your estimated capital surplus or deficit in clear monetary terms.

Next, the model presents a sensitivity analysis demonstrating how the gap shifts under real, inflation-adjusted annual returns of three percent, five percent, and seven percent. This isolates how much market performance affects your final outcome.

The analysis must explicitly identify the single variable your retirement plan is most vulnerable to, whether that is healthcare inflation, prolonged longevity, or market sequence of returns early in retirement.

Finally, the model suggests three concrete adjustments ordered by their mathematical impact on closing the gap, such as adjusting target retirement age by two years or increasing monthly savings by fifteen percent.

What this can't tell you

This prompt cannot predict changes to statutory state retirement ages, sovereign tax codes, or national pension solvency decades into the future. Healthcare expenses in retirement often rise faster than general consumer price inflation, which standard models can underestimate.

The model cannot know whether your retirement jurisdiction taxes worldwide capital gains, pension lump sums, or wealth. It does not account for exchange rate swings if you save in one currency and retire in another. If you relocate across borders, foreign exchange shifts can alter your real purchasing power significantly. Language models sometimes make compound math errors when combining inflation adjustments with regular contributions, so verify the gap figures with an offline spreadsheet. The output represents a mathematical planning benchmark rather than financial advice.

Doing this without the retyping

Outside the app, assessing your retirement runway means manually compiling savings, estimating returns, and re-entering account balances every time values change. In Sumio, this retirement analysis is one of sixty-two prompts built directly into the app. It evaluates your position with one tap against the balances you track, updating your capital gap as your investments grow. Your records stay stored on your device, with no account required and no ads.