MaxiFi Planner

What it is

MaxiFi Planner is a browser-based lifetime financial planner built on the economic model of Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, and published by his company, Economic Security Planning, Inc., founded in 1993, whose first-generation tool was the ESPlanner desktop program. It is bought by people who want the spending number itself, not a probability.

The method is consumption smoothing, from the Modigliani–Brumberg life-cycle hypothesis: a household wants its discretionary living standard to stay level over its life. Instead of asking what you plan to spend, MaxiFi takes earnings, account balances, contributions, pensions, Social Security covered earnings, housing costs and one-off receipts and expenses, and solves for the highest annual discretionary spending those resources can sustain. Because taxes depend on income, withdrawals depend on spending and benefits depend on claiming ages, the vendor says it solves the circularity with iterative dynamic programming. Every result is reported in today's dollars.

The output is a Base Plan — a lifetime balance sheet and year-by-year income, fixed and discretionary spending, suggested saving and withdrawals by account type, net worth and taxes, plus a life-insurance figure that would hold each survivor's living standard. Alternative Profiles let you change one decision, such as a later retirement or a move to another state, and read the difference as a change in annual spending.

On the paid tier, an optimisation layer searches thousands of scenarios: Social Security filing dates for both spouses, retirement-account withdrawal start dates, Roth versus non-Roth withdrawal order, and annual Roth conversion amounts. The Roth optimiser maximises lifetime discretionary spending or the estate rather than minimising tax, and accounts for RMDs, taxation of benefits, IRMAA premiums and cash-flow constraints.

Living Standard Monte Carlo replaces the usual success percentage with a range of living standards. It runs in two modes. Upside Investing treats stocks as possibly worthless, sets a spending floor from safe assets alone, and raises the floor as simulated equity gains are moved into safe assets on the exit schedule you give it. Full Risk Investing spends from safe and risky assets together and lets spending move with the simulated returns — more early spending, with downside you see as a lower living standard in bad paths.

Pricing

A 14-day trial builds the Base Plan and three alternative profiles, needs a credit card and bills on day 15 unless cancelled. Unlocked is $149 a year, annual only, and adds everything else: the optimisers, the Monte Carlo, budgeting, the real-estate, annuity, HSA and 529 modules, 25 profiles and export. Refunds are discretionary: the fulfilment policy says one is generally given if requested in writing within 30 days of purchase.

MaxiFi PRO is the advisor edition, required on the advisor's side to share a plan; its price is not printed on the public pages. Paid sessions with staff economists and CFP professionals start at $250 for a one-hour Flight Check — services, not tiers of the software.

Data & coverage

US households only. Taxes are modelled as federal, state, FICA and Medicare IRMAA, with Social Security benefits computed from your covered earnings and Medicare Part B premiums included; the vendor's FAQ says the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act provisions are in. None of it has a non-US mode.

There is no market data. The FAQ says plainly that MaxiFi is not an asset-allocation tool or a fund analyser: accounts carry an assumed rate of return, and the Monte Carlo draws returns around your stock and safe-asset assumptions.

Integrations

Output leaves as a PDF or Excel report, and an advisor on MaxiFi PRO can receive a shared plan. The published feature list names no account aggregation, no API and no import from other planners; everything is entered by hand.

Limitations

• US-only. Federal and state tax, FICA, IRMAA and Social Security are the model's spine.
• No free tier. The 14-day trial needs a card and withholds the optimisers and the Monte Carlo; billing is annual only, with refunds at the vendor's discretion.
• The answer is a spending level, not a verdict. Smoothing assumes you want a flat living standard; a household that deliberately front-loads travel or wants a large bequest has to express that through settings, and the headline number moves with every return and inflation assumption you type.
• The vendor states the Roth objective two ways. The Roth optimiser page says MaxiFi finds the conversions that "maximize your lifetime spending" where other tools minimise tax, yet the same page promises to "minimize your lifetime taxes", and the how-MaxiFi-compares page says its Social Security and Roth optimisations "minimize lifetime taxes". The learning-centre articles name spending, or the estate; read the result as that.
• No account linking. Balances go stale until you re-enter them.
• Not a portfolio tool. Asset classes are not modelled at security or fund level.

Alternatives

Boldin and ProjectionLab give the conventional success-probability view with account linking. For the claiming-age question alone, the free Open Social Security runs a present-value comparison with no account. Pralana Gold, an Excel model, also has a consumption-smoothing option, inside a deterministic, Monte Carlo and historical-sequence engine.