News

What's New

Every update to Quidsmith, newest first. The game began life as the UK Personal Finance Simulator and was rebuilt and renamed Quidsmith in 2026; the full history is below.

v1.4 2026-07-04

• New Lifetime ISA: invest toward a first home or age 60 with a 25% government bonus on up to £4,000 a year. It shares the £20,000 ISA allowance, and a non-qualifying withdrawal takes a 25% charge.
• New Protection tab: income protection, buildings and contents, and health cover. Each charges a yearly premium and reimburses a matching unexpected event before it can force a sale.
• New equity release: from age 55, borrow against an outright home with no monthly repayments. The balance rolls up at a fixed rate and is settled when the home is sold, so it trades future estate for cash now.
• Four new achievements, and old saves are retired for a clean cutoff (save format 2.13).

v1.3 2026-06-26

• New interactive tutorial: a guided first run that walks you through the whole loop, from clearing debt and building a buffer to your pension, ISAs, general investing, and reacting to life events.
• Start it from the main menu (New here? Take the tutorial). It runs on a gentle, fixed scenario so every step lines up, and you can skip or replay it any time.

v1.2 2026-06-18

• Lottery expanded into a Quids Millions draw: £2.50 a line, pick 5 numbers from 50 plus 2 Stars from 12.
• Thirteen prize tiers now pay out, not just the jackpot, with realistic odds and a varying £14m–£208m jackpot.
• Annual statement breaks down every lottery tier won that year (still tax-free).

v1.1 2026-06-11

• Added investment withdrawals across every wrapper: Cash ISA, Easy Access, Premium Bonds, S&S ISA (ETF + stocks) and GIA (ETF + stocks).
• Individual stock allocation in S&S ISA and GIA now uses percentage-based inputs.
• Lock buttons on all deposit fields: confirm allocations and track available balance live.
• Forced liquidation reworked: any shortfall that pushes the current account negative opens the liquidation screen, where you sell investments to cover it or auto-liquidate in priority order. Time-locked savings forfeit interest plus a 2% penalty; gilts sell at market value; pensions stay inaccessible before 57.

v1.0 2026-06-04

• Rebranded from UK Personal Finance Simulator to Quidsmith. Same simulation, new name and look.
• Existing saves carry over automatically; the old name now appears only here in the history below.
• New About, Guide, Support and News pages bring everything under the Quidsmith banner.

v0.52 2026-05-19

• Final polish pass before the rebrand: tidied allocation locks and the liquidation priority order.
• Fixed an edge case where a fully locked allocation could leave a stray penny unassigned.

v0.51 2026-04-07

• Tax year 2026/27. Income tax bands and the Personal Allowance stay frozen at £12,570 / £50,270 / £125,140; the ISA allowance remains £20,000.
• Added a reminder that the minimum private pension access age rises from 55 to 57 in April 2028.

v0.50 2026-03-10

• Spring Statement tracked: no changes to income tax bands, the ISA allowance, or CGT and dividend allowances.
• Premium Bonds prize-fund rate refreshed to match the latest NS&I figure.

v0.49 2026-02-12

• Casino tuned: slot machine pays back about 94.9% over time, European roulette carries the standard 2.70% house edge.
• Added a gambling summary so you can see lifetime stakes and returns at a glance.

v0.48 2026-01-15

• New casino reachable from the allocation screen: a slot machine and European roulette, settled immediately in cash.
• Winnings and losses flow straight through the current account, with two new lifetime stats.

v0.47 2025-12-09

• Year-end performance pass: faster year simulation on long runs.
• Cleaned up the save format and migration; old saves continue to load.

v0.46 2025-11-26

• Autumn Budget tracked: income tax and National Insurance thresholds confirmed frozen for a further period.
• State Pension triple lock applied to the projection.

v0.45 2025-10-14

• Balance pass driven by a simulation harness: difficulty curves retuned so invested players are challenged without being punished.
• Fixed a liquidation bug that could wrongly trigger game over at exactly £0.

v0.44 2025-09-08

• Premium Bonds prize tiers and odds refreshed to match NS&I, with a per-year breakdown on the annual statement.

v0.43 2025-08-12

• Accessibility pass: keyboard navigation through the allocation screen and screen-reader labels on key controls.

v0.42 2025-07-15

• Mobile and tablet layout pass so allocation and statement screens work on smaller screens.

v0.41 2025-05-13

• Annual statement redesigned to group income, costs, tax and investment growth.
• Fixed dividend tax being incorrectly applied inside ISAs (ISA holdings are tax-free).

v0.40 2025-04-08

• Tax year 2025/26. Personal Allowance and higher-rate threshold remain frozen at £12,570 and £50,270, additional rate from £125,140.
• ISA allowance held at £20,000; CGT annual exempt amount £3,000; dividend allowance £500.

v0.39 2025-03-11

• Added optional ads with a first-party PECR/GDPR cookie consent banner; everything stays off until you opt in.

v0.38 2025-02-10

• Sandbox gained an Advanced section: the full difficulty configuration is now editable.
• Fixed dead salary and living-cost sandbox fields that previously had no effect.

v0.37 2025-01-14

• New manage-by-exception advance: fast-forward your own plan year by year until something noteworthy happens, with automatic stops on a shortfall.

v0.36 2024-12-10

• Overview gained an interactive stacked portfolio chart across nine asset categories, with hover and click point details.
• Various bug fixes to net-worth aggregation.

v0.35 2024-11-12

• Added life-event dilemmas: sixteen choice cards (startup equity, lending to family, career moves) with deferred payoffs that resolve years later.

v0.34 2024-10-15

• Care counterplay: a long-term care-cover product plus wellbeing-driven residential-care risk, with a care-risk telegraph so you can plan ahead.

v0.33 2024-09-10

• Annuities: from age 50 you can buy a lifelong guaranteed income, priced from your wellbeing and predicted CPI (lower wellbeing buys a better rate).

v0.32 2024-08-13

• Win screen now shows a Life Score combining wealth against par with wellbeing, as a geometric mean.

v0.31 2024-07-09

• Added a wellbeing system: diet, exercise and community standing habits, funded as a cost-neutral carve-out of living costs.

v0.30 2024-06-11

• Crypto collapse risk added, with a difficulty multiplier.
• Fixed a rounding error in gold allocations.

v0.29 2024-05-14

• New Exotics tab: physical gold (held in an ISA or GIA) and crypto (GIA only), plus four new achievements.

v0.28 2024-04-09

• Tax year 2024/25. Dividend allowance cut to £500 and the CGT annual exempt amount cut to £3,000.
• Pension Lifetime Allowance abolished and replaced by lump sum allowances.
• ISA rules relaxed in line with the reforms: more than one ISA of the same type can be paid into in a year.

v0.27 2024-03-12

• Spring Budget tracked: the higher CGT rate on residential property cut from 28% to 24%, reflected when you sell a second home.

v0.26 2024-02-13

• Stock market expanded to 27 fictional companies, with crash mechanics.

v0.25 2024-01-16

• Added company due diligence: a bull and bear case for every stock, reachable from the S&S ISA and GIA pickers, plus two new low-volatility companies.

v0.24 2023-12-12

• Performance pass for a faster year simulation on long playthroughs.

v0.23 2023-11-14

• Added the tiered ending screen, from Survived through to Legacy.
• Fixed game over not triggering when the current account hit £0.

v0.22 2023-10-10

• Unexpected events pool expanded to more than 25 events.

v0.21 2023-09-12

• Premium Bonds prize-fund rate updated to reflect NS&I raising it to 4.65%, with a per-year prize record.

v0.20 2023-08-15

• Added sandbox mode: set your own starting position and economy.

v0.19 2023-07-11

• Added an achievements system.

v0.18 2023-06-13

• Sell house (reverts to renting) and sell car (shows current vehicle value).
• Corrected the stamp duty calculation on property purchases.

v0.17 2023-05-09

• Added offset mortgages and a full property purchase flow: buy outright or with a mortgage, set the deposit, and preview the monthly payment before committing.

v0.16 2023-04-11

• Tax year 2023/24. The 1.25-point dividend tax rise was reversed (back to 8.75 / 33.75 / 39.35%).
• Pension annual allowance raised from £40,000 to £60,000 and the Lifetime Allowance charge removed.
• Additional-rate threshold now £125,140; dividend allowance £1,000; CGT annual exempt amount £6,000.

v0.15 2023-03-14

• Added JSON export and import of saves.
• Fixed a save migration that dropped pension pots.

v0.14 2023-02-14

• Added the first unexpected events pool (15 events).
• Auto-save to local storage.

v0.13 2023-01-17

• Added a SIPP alongside the workplace pension, plus a State Pension projection.

v0.12 2022-12-13

• Mortgage mechanics: fixed, tracker and SVR, with loan-to-value tracking.
• Fixed negative equity not displaying correctly.

v0.11 2022-11-22

• Autumn Statement tracked: additional-rate threshold to fall to £125,140 from April 2023, the dividend allowance to drop to £1,000 then £500, and the CGT annual exempt amount to fall to £6,000 then £3,000. Telegraphed in-game.

v0.10 2022-10-11

• Added a workplace pension with employer matching and tax relief. Pension annual allowance £40,000.

v0.9 2022-09-13

• Added Time-Locked savings and gilts. Accessing time-locked savings early forfeits the interest.

v0.8 2022-08-09

• Added individual company shares (12 companies) inside the S&S ISA and GIA, with an annual bankruptcy risk.

v0.7 2022-07-12

• Added a General Investment Account with dividend and capital gains tax. CGT annual exempt amount £12,300; dividend allowance £2,000.

v0.6 2022-06-14

• Added Premium Bonds (£50,000 maximum holding, tax-free prizes).
• Fixed a rounding error in monthly mortgage interest.

v0.5 2022-05-10

• Added a Stocks & Shares ISA with a Global ETF. The £20,000 ISA allowance is shared across Cash and S&S ISAs.

v0.4 2022-04-12

• Tax year 2022/23. Dividend tax rates raised by 1.25 points (to 8.75 / 33.75 / 39.35%).
• Added income tax bands (20 / 40 / 45%) with a £12,570 Personal Allowance and a £50,270 higher-rate threshold.

v0.3 2022-03-15

• Added wage growth and annual living costs.
• Spring Statement note: the National Insurance primary threshold rises to £12,570 from July 2022.
• Fixed interest compounding twice in some years.

v0.2 2022-02-15

• Added inflation and the Bank of England base rate to the economy engine; savings interest now tracks the base rate.

v0.1 2022-01-18

• First public build of the UK Personal Finance Simulator.
• Core year-by-year loop with a current account, a basic Cash ISA and Easy Access savings. ISA allowance £20,000; Personal Allowance £12,570.