MaxiFi Planner vs Pralana Gold vs Boldin: a spending level or a chance of success

All three are US-only planners. All three model federal and state tax, Social Security and Medicare a year at a time, and none of them carries market data. Their annual prices are close: $149 for MaxiFi, $144 for Boldin, and $99 for Pralana Gold plus a $30 sign-up fee. Those similarities hide the fact that they do not answer the same question. Give the same household to each one and you get back a dollar amount, a dollar amount added to the spending you entered, and a percentage. Inside each one, the button labelled "optimise" is trying to maximise something different.

Who supplies the spending figure

Boldin takes spending as an input. You enter it in the Basic or the Detailed Budgeter. You can also enter two budgets, "Must Spend" and "Like to Spend", and switch between them to see how each affects the plan. Its chance of success is the share of 1,000 simulated paths in which that budget ends the plan at $0 or more. Boldin's help centre reads a 60% score as a 40% chance of having to make adjustments at some point, and the adjustment it names is spending less. The percentage belongs to the budget you typed. Type a different budget and you get a different score.

MaxiFi gives spending as the output. You enter the expenses you are committed to, such as housing costs and one-off special expenses, along with earnings, balances, pensions and Social Security covered earnings. MaxiFi then solves for the highest discretionary spending those resources can hold level across your life, in today's dollars. When you change a decision in an Alternative Profile, the result changes as a dollar amount of annual spending, not as a number of percentage points. Its Monte Carlo gives no success rate at all. It shows a range of living standards over what the vendor calls "hundreds of return paths".

Pralana Gold does both. By default it works like Boldin: you enter income and expense streams, and it reports a success rate from 1,000 Monte Carlo trials, then replays the plan against history. Its consumption-smoothing option reverses the question.

Two smoothed figures that are not the same figure

Pralana and MaxiFi both offer consumption smoothing, so their spending figures look comparable. They are not, for two reasons.

Pralana's figure is an increment. Its own description says the deterministic smoothing algorithm calculates the additional annual spending your plan can support, taking all your other inputs as given. Pralana also calls that figure a measure of the margin in your plan. MaxiFi's figure is your whole discretionary spending level. To compare the two for one household, add Pralana's increment to the non-essential spending you already typed into it.

The two handle risk differently. Pralana states that smoothing algorithms are generally built to spend all of your money by the end of life, and that a deterministic smoothed figure generally has about a 50% probability of success. Its statistical mode combines Monte Carlo and historical simulations with smoothing to calculate a standard of living with a 90% probability that the money outlasts you. Of these three planners, that mode is the only place the two kinds of answer meet: one spending figure, with a stated chance of success attached to it.

MaxiFi does not attach a probability to its figure. Its Upside Investing mode treats stocks as possibly worthless. It sets a spending floor from safe assets alone, then raises that floor as simulated stock gains are moved into safe assets on a schedule you choose. Its Full Risk mode lets spending move up and down with returns. So the two products express risk in different units. Pralana gives a spending level and a probability. MaxiFi gives a floor that holds even if stocks go to zero, and a range of outcomes above it.

Pralana's smoothing runs inside Excel, so it has Excel's problems. Release PRC2026.2, on 4 June 2026, fixed consumption smoothing giving wrong results when Excel's iterative calculation was switched on. The same release turned iterative calculation off during withdrawal-order optimisation. A workbook older than that release may still have the bug. Check the version before you trust a smoothed figure.

Three optimisers chasing different goals

All three products search for a Roth conversion schedule and for Social Security start ages. They do not judge the results by the same measure.

Roth conversions.

• MaxiFi looks for the annual conversion amounts that maximise lifetime discretionary spending, or the estate. Its Roth optimiser page contrasts this with "other tools", which it says optimise for minimum tax, yet the same page also promises to minimise lifetime taxes, and its comparison page describes its Social Security and Roth optimisations as minimising lifetime taxes. The learning-centre articles on the optimiser are the ones that name the objective: the highest lifetime discretionary spending, or the estate.
• Boldin offers four strategies. The two goal-based ones work through each federal bracket and pick the one that gives either the highest estate value or the lowest lifetime tax liability. The two rule-based ones convert just enough each year to fill a federal bracket or an IRMAA threshold you pick. Boldin's technical notes add a detail that changes results: if you have no Roth account, the Explorer creates one at the default 8.08% return. Boldin recommends giving tax-deferred and Roth accounts the same rate, so that the result reflects the tax benefit and not a difference in assumed returns.
• Pralana limits conversions by multiples of the federal poverty level (to protect ACA subsidies), by federal bracket year by year over a 20-year span, and by IRMAA bracket. Its optimised mode then calculates the bracket limits that maximise your long-term savings balance, and compares the portfolio's buying power before and after the conversions.

That gives four goals: minimum lifetime tax, maximum estate, maximum lifetime spending and maximum long-term savings. They need not produce the same schedule. If the three products give you three different schedules, that comes from the goals, not from a mistake in your inputs.

Social Security. Pralana searches for both spouses' start ages that give maximum lifetime savings, with taxes and investment growth included. Its site explicitly contrasts this with tools that report the age that maximises lifetime benefits. Boldin's Social Security Explorer shows claiming dates and life expectancies against lifetime benefits. You see the effect on estate value, taxes and how long the portfolio lasts by building separate scenarios. MaxiFi runs its filing-date search inside the full plan, so a later start is weighed against the income gap before benefits begin. Its optimisation layer is described as a search for ways to raise annual discretionary spending.

How each one generates bad years

• Boldin draws 1,000 paths from a normal distribution around one blended return per account. Since July 2025, every account in a path moves in step. A path that runs dry partway through and is rescued by a later inflow still counts as a success.
• Pralana Gold runs 1,000 traditional or bootstrap Monte Carlo trials. It also replays the plan from every start year since 1928, more than 75 sequences, and can project any single historical start year in full.
• MaxiFi draws returns around your own assumptions for stocks and safe assets, and reports living standards, not failures.

Only Pralana tests the plan against the actual sequence of past returns. The other two draw returns from assumptions you supply. Why this changes the number is explained in the Monte Carlo glossary entry and in why two retirement calculators disagree.

What you have to bring

Pralana Gold needs Microsoft Excel on Windows or Mac. It does not run in Numbers, Google Sheets or LibreOffice, because the model depends on Excel macros. It also takes hours of data entry. There is no trial, and fees are non-refundable unless the vendor agrees. A lapsed subscription keeps working, but its tax tables stop being updated.

MaxiFi needs a card for a 14-day trial, and the trial leaves out the optimisers and the Monte Carlo, which are the parts compared on this page. After the trial it is $149 a year, annual only. The fulfilment policy says a refund is generally given if requested in writing within 30 days.

Boldin is the only one of the three you can judge before the first charge. Its free tier leaves out Monte Carlo and tax modelling, but the 14-day PlannerPlus trial includes them. After the trial it is $144 a year, with no prorated refund. It is also the only one that links accounts, through Meld, and that import covers balances only. In the other two, every balance is typed in.

Which one, and when

You want the planner to produce the spending figure: MaxiFi Planner. It is the only one of the three built around that answer, and its optimisers measure every decision in the same unit, annual spending. The trade-off is that risk is shown as a floor and a range, never as a percentage.

You already have a spending figure and want to know whether it holds: Boldin. You enter the budget, or two budgets, and it scores them. Its Roth Explorer also lets you choose between lowest tax and highest estate as the goal. It is the easiest of the three to try, and the only one that updates balances itself.

You want both answers from one model, or want the plan replayed against actual history, and you work in Excel: Pralana Gold. It scores a budget you enter, it calculates a smoothed spending figure at a stated probability, and it is the only one of the three with historical sequences. In return you get no trial, no browser version and many hours of input — though Pralana Online is the same model in a browser, at the same base price, with the smoothing and variable-spending options intact. If you have Excel and the patience, Gold covers what the other two do separately. MaxiFi and Boldin are for readers who want one of the two answers without a spreadsheet.

Do not use one to check another. A MaxiFi spending level, a Pralana increment and a Boldin percentage are in three different units. The three Roth schedules are optimised toward four different goals. When they disagree, it is because they ask different questions, not because one of them found a problem with your plan. For Boldin against its closest browser rival, see ProjectionLab vs Boldin. Other planners, and the free historical calculators, are on the retirement planning page.