You have been budgeting with PocketGuard for two years and you want to know whether you are on track for retirement. PocketGuard will not tell you. Here is where each tool lands.
PocketGuard Plus has a debt payoff planner. If you have US student loans, credit cards, or auto loans, the planner models avalanche and snowball strategies and shows you the date you become debt-free. For US households carrying consumer debt, this is the strongest feature of PocketGuard and the one that justifies the upgrade.
PocketGuard also has a basic savings goal tracker. You set a goal, a target date, and a monthly contribution, and the app shows your progress. This is solid for short-term goals like an emergency fund, a holiday, or a wedding. It does not model anything beyond 5 years.
PocketGuard has no retirement planner. No pension projections, no ISA modelling, no State Pension integration. If you want to know whether your current savings rate gets you to the UK moderate retirement number of around £580,000 for a single person, PocketGuard cannot answer that question. The investment tracking in Plus is read-only and US-only.
The savings goal feature is useful for £5,000 holidays or £10,000 car deposits. It is not useful for £200,000 ISA targets or £400,000 pension pots. The planning horizon is short by design.
Delphina plans from daily money through retirement in one place. The same budgeting dashboard that tells you whether you have £87 left this month also projects your State Pension, models your SIPP, and gives you the date you reach your retirement number. A 38-year-old with £42,000 in a SIPP and £2,100 a month going in gets a specific projection, a specific gap, and a specific monthly action.
Delphina also has goal planning beyond retirement. House deposit, school fees, sabbatical, career break: any goal with a target amount and a target date can be modelled against your real cash flow. The plan adjusts automatically when your pay or spending changes.
Pull your State Pension forecast from gov.uk and your latest workplace pension statement. Connect both to Delphina this week. Within 15 minutes you will have a single number showing how far you are from your retirement target, and one action to take before the end of the month.