What does "What would close the gap" show?
Priced alternatives for reaching the top of your ladder — save more, take longer, change the mix, or clear expensive debt first — each with what it costs you and its working.
What would close the gap is a short list of priced alternatives for reaching the top of your ladder — your FI number — by the age you set. They are alternatives, not steps to work through: each is a different way to reach the same number, priced so you can see which one you could actually live with. It appears while what you hold is below the top of the ladder, or when expensive debt is competing with your emergency cash.
The cards
| Tag | What it says |
|---|---|
| Save more | Another amount a month reaches the top of the ladder on time — the only option that does not move the date. |
| Take longer | How many more years it takes at what you already put away — nothing changes about how you live now. |
| Change the mix | Holding more in growth assets, which widens the outcome in both directions — a better average, not a safer one. |
| Clear debt first | Capping emergency cash at one month and putting the difference against a loan costing 12% or more. |
Every card carries a headline, a line headed What it costs you with your figures in it, and Show the working, which opens the arithmetic behind it.
Where the figures come from
- What you put away each month is your plan’s own arithmetic: income, less spending, less loan payments.
- The return is the one your current mix is expected to earn — the Held in growth assets setting on the Sufficiency card.
- The target is the top of the ladder, which is your FI number.
Reading it beside the projection
Where this goes, just above, says in a sentence when the middle line completes the whole ladder and how that sits against the age you were aiming for — or, if it is not reached inside your plan, says so and points at these options. Each rung then gets its own line: Covered, an age, or Not reached. The shaded band runs from a poor run of markets to a good one; it is not a forecast and not three futures to choose between.
See this in your own plan.
Open Freedom LadderLast reviewed 1 October 2026.