Boldin

What it is

Boldin is a browser-based retirement planner that builds one year-by-year projection of a household out to a longevity age you set, and then lets you argue with it. Accounts, pensions, annuities, Social Security, a home and rentals, federal and state income tax, Medicare and pre-65 healthcare and every recurring expense feed the same cash-flow model, so changing a claiming age or a Roth conversion amount moves the whole plan rather than one chart.

The product was NewRetirement until 3 September 2024, when founder Steve Chen announced the rename to Boldin; the legal entity is still NewRetirement, Inc. d/b/a Boldin. Development continues weekly — the release notes carry entries through 2 September 2026.

The chance-of-success number is a Monte Carlo, but not a historical-sequence one: 1,000 iterations drawn from a normal distribution around your own average rate of return and a standard deviation derived from history, not from the actual ordering of past returns the way FIRECalc or cFIREsim replay it. Each account carries one blended rate and standard deviation, and since 2 July 2025 every account in a path moves in step, with the mean switched from a geometric to an arithmetic average. A trial succeeds if the plan ends at zero or more. The deterministic projection beside it runs on Optimistic, Pessimistic and Average assumption sets, defaulting off 1994–2024 data: 2.54% general inflation, 3.36% medical, 8.08% on a moderate portfolio.

Spending can be entered as two budgets, "Must Spend" and "Like to Spend", and the plan toggled between them — necessities against necessities plus discretionary, or today's budget against a leaner one. The Social Security Explorer shows how claiming dates and longevity change lifetime benefits; estate value and lifetime taxes are compared through scenarios. The Roth Conversion Explorer offers four strategies: two goal-based ones that cycle through the federal brackets for the highest estate value or the lowest lifetime tax liability, and two rule-based ones that fill up to a chosen tax bracket or IRMAA threshold each year. If the plan has no Roth account, the Explorer creates one at the default 8.08% return; create a placeholder account first if your other accounts assume something else, or the comparison is not like for like.

Pricing

Basic is free and is a real planner, not a teaser: 100-plus inputs, what-if scenarios, 10-plus charts, two of the interactive explorers, up to five alerts. What it withholds is the part people come for — Monte Carlo, tax insights, withdrawal strategy, real-estate and healthcare modelling, adjustable assumptions, saved scenarios, account linking and export.

PlannerPlus is $144 a year, billed annually after a 14-day trial. There is no month-to-month option, and the fulfilment policy states there are no prorated refunds: cancelling after the trial stops the next renewal and nothing more.

Above the software sit human services, which this catalogue does not evaluate — a $250 coaching session on your own plan, and Boldin Advisors, where a CFP professional charges $3,200 flat for a one-off Retirement Plan Checkup or from $1,200 a year for ongoing advisory. Advice engagements sold alongside the software, not tiers of it.

Data & coverage

US households only, and structurally so: the tax engine models federal and state income tax, Social Security gets its own claiming-age explorer, a 2.54% default COLA and an opt-in future benefit reduction — off by default, 22% from 2032 when switched on, per the help article read on 9 October 2026 (comparing claiming ages) — and Medicare costs come from Medicare.gov state averages adjusted by health status and premium level. None of it has a non-US equivalent.

Boldin carries no market data: assets are modelled at the account and allocation level with an assumed rate of return, never at security level.

Integrations

PlannerPlus links accounts through Meld, which routes each institution to whichever of Plaid, MX or Finicity connects best. The import is balances only — Boldin's own help centre says it does not yet capture cost basis, allocations or transactions. Output is a printable PDF plan report plus a download of the annual values behind it; there is no consumer API and no MCP server.

Limitations

• US-only. Tax, Social Security and Medicare modelling have no international mode.
• No mobile app on iOS or Android; the input screens want a desktop browser.
• Annual billing only, with no prorated refund after the 14-day trial.
• Monte Carlo is a normal distribution around your assumed return, not a replay of historical sequences, so sequence-of-returns risk arrives as variance rather than as the 1966-style path that actually breaks plans.
• "Success" is a low bar — ending at zero counts, and the help centre confirms a plan that runs dry mid-way and later recovers, say through a late property sale, still scores as a win. Two of its methodology articles describe the score as iterations where funds "never run out"; the article that defines success spells out the end-balance test.
• Account linking imports balances, nothing else. Holdings and cost basis stay manual.
• A lapsed subscription re-gates the plan. Boldin documents how to cancel but not what becomes of your plan afterwards; what is certain is that everything PlannerPlus adds sits behind the tier.

Alternatives

ProjectionLab covers similar ground with a stronger FIRE bent; Pralana Gold goes deeper on tax mechanics for people willing to work in an Excel workbook; MaxiFi Planner swaps the success percentage for consumption smoothing. For free historical-sequence testing, cFIREsim and FIRECalc answer that one question and nothing else.