Scenarios was born out of frustration — and optimism.
Over the past five years, I've developed a deep interest in personal finance. That journey was heavily shaped by thoughtful educators whose podcasts, books and commentary have helped demystify markets for everyday investors.
Inspired by their work, I began studying for the CII R0 exams with the intention of becoming an Independent Financial Adviser. Along the way, I encountered something that genuinely concerned me: the scale of the UK's advice gap.
While advisers provide enormous value, the dominant assets-under-management fee structure inevitably means advice is most accessible to those with larger portfolios. The result is a structural imbalance: those who arguably need clarity the most often receive the least personalised insight.
I considered starting a flat-fee advice firm. However, even a fairly priced, transparent structure would still exclude many of the people I hoped to serve. Creating another YouTube channel or podcast felt unlikely to add meaningful value in a space already populated by exceptional communicators.
So I asked a different question: what if the analytical tools typically reserved for advisers could be made accessible to consumers?
That question became Scenarios.
But ideas alone don't become products. I put a simple challenge to Ash, a front-end developer I had worked with in hospitality: if the time and resources were there, could something like this actually be built? His response was immediate — you can build anything. That belief became the starting point of a serious collaboration. From early sketches and architectural debates through to implementation, his technical execution has been instrumental in turning an abstract idea into a functioning platform.
Scenarios is designed to provide individuals with access to powerful financial modelling — similar in concept to software used by professional planners — but built for the end user. It allows people to explore retirement projections, stress-test assumptions, model uncertainty, and better understand the trade-offs inherent in long-term financial decisions.
It is detailed. It is analytical. And at times, it can feel demanding — because financial planning is complex. But complexity should not be gatekept.
Scenarios is also deeply personal. Since becoming a father to Otto, long-term financial clarity has felt less theoretical and far more immediate. Thinking about education, security and opportunity over decades — not just years — reinforced how important accessible financial understanding really is. This platform is, in part, an attempt to build the kind of clarity I want for my own family.
If the advice gap is unlikely to close overnight, then better tools may be part of the solution.
— Joshua Thompson