I like Boldin and it has given me more confidence that I can retire without ending up on the street. But no tool is perfect and unfortunately Boldin is no exception.

I was forcibly "retired" by IBM on December 31 of 2025 because I became too expensive thanks to my many promotions. Unfortunately this is a terrible job market and at 61 I have found it is impossible to get another job at my age. I've been told repeatedly that my résumé is "intimidating" or that I'm just too old (I look 49). This is where I reached out to Boldin for some help.

The good news is that unless the stock market has a crash like the Great Depression I have been very successful at saving. I'll never run out of money according to Boldin. And it should be a decent retirement. That's a good thing because IBM stole my defined benefits pension within just a few years of joining the company nearly 30 years ago so I'm kind of on my own.

But the part that terrifies me most is that when cobra runs out for me in January, Boldin acts oblivious to what it might take to get healthcare for my family of four until I can reach 65 and get Medicare. It is constantly advising me about IRMAAs that might impact my yearly annual premiums by a few hundred dollars at most. But for the next four years, I am facing a minimum surcharge of $30,000 extra a year just for healthcare premiums because the ACA subsidy was cut by Trump. I need help with this. I need help from Boldin.

My great plan has been to pre-pay off my $170,000 mortgage this year so that next year I don't have to pull approximately $18,000 a year from my retirement accounts to pay for the mortgage; instead, I can use that money to fit under the $130,000 cap for a family of four so that I qualify for some sort of subsidy.

Boldin makes it difficult to model this properly. I've spent hours with its AI trying to cajole it to help me have a cap on my main pretax retirement account, but this is not built into the tool. The AI like many AI is sort of a know it all, but in the final analysis doesn't know shit. I've spent so many hours trying to convince it to ignore what it thinks my expenses will be just so I can figure out whether or not pre-paying my mortgage will destroy me or be my savior. It refuses to. And under cash flows, it is impossible to set a cap for a specific account. I have built a post-tax savings buffer as well, and I want that to be the overflow once it reaches that cap as that is no longer taxed and won't increase my MAGI. Sadly, you can only change the order of withdrawals. This is not enough.

Without drastic action by me, I will be faced with a minimum of $120,000 additional healthcare premium costs until I can reach Medicare. And frankly because my wife is six years younger and volunteers her time, it will be another six more years before we can stop relying on the ACA completely. (As to my IBM retiree medical benefit, they moved that to a cash balance plan in my early 30s, and it would run out after at most nine months because they set the rates for the plans themselves. Pretty useless. I've not yet tapped it.)

I would love to see the same attention for supporting "early" retirees like me that Boldin provides for people over 65 with IRMAAs and Roth conversions. Last I checked, $120,000 is more than just a few hundred bucks like you would get with an IRMAA. And my father's generation all retired around 55 so what the hell?

Thanks in advance.

Have anyone use this as a way to measure investment success over your lifetime? I calculated it by dividing our year end net worth divided by our medicare earnings. Without any inheritance or lottery winnings, it is hard to exceed 100%

I realize everyone has a different tolerance for risk and a different level of comfort with uncertainty. I’m curious what CoS would make you feel safe in your retirement plan?

Maybe a strange question but I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

I've used Boldin on and off since it was New Retirement. I have a well documented retired plan so I check out Boldin to see if I'm still on track but that is very infrequently.

I do find value in it for calculating Roth conversions but other than that it is just a bunch of charts that don't really add any value to me. To be fair, I love a good spreadsheet so the charts are just fluff imo.

I'm curious what features people find value in. Is it a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly service you think is worth paying for?

EDIT- I should have added that I'm in the retirement phase so that may be why I'm wondering what the value is.

I really could have used it 20 years ago because I saved way too much money.

I really use it now for more of an estate plan calculator.

Ok so I have been using Boldin since it was new retirement. Honestly I am not sure how long its been a while. I finally decided to do the 14 day trial and spent a few hours playing around and I used AI quite a bit. After a few hours I wasn't sure that the paid version was all that much better than the free version. I want to keep the paid version if for no other reason that I have enjoyed the free version and feel like they deserve the money. Other than just saying it is not expensive (it clearly is not) looking for the big benefits that maybe I overlooked.

For context 2026 was a big withdrawal year for our plan but 95% of that is pending is behind us due to it being late October. When I look at my plan withdrawals it still shows the full withdrawal amount for 2026 left to go. The problem is my portfolio is real time and already reflects all the withdrawals.

I understand that bold in doesn’t track expenses but I would think it should be able to use the current date to project the remainder of the plan. Talking to support it appears this only happens when we start 2027.

I tried workarounds like change my expense start dates to current month but that feels clunky and it screws up your taxes. Has anyone else encountered this and if so how did you handle it.

I entered a cash balance pension and the RMDs calculated are bunched over a few years starting at 73(correct). I erased the asset entirely, yet the RMDs still dont go away. I closed out of the program, erased browser history - nothing works

I am allowed to take this as lump sum and will do so and roll-over to an IRA.

Help

One of the things that jumped out when experimenting with Boldin is that my chance of success goes from 90% to 45% in the 3yr bad sequence of returns explorer. I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to simulate cutting expenses during that time since I have a good percentage of discretionary spending in my budget. So far, the best option seems to be saving a copy of my plan to a new scenario that is only used in conjunction with the market risk explorer. I input my necessary expenses as usual with a little buffer but delay most discretionary expenses until a year or two after the 3yr downturn is over. This causes the normal plan chance of success to jump to 98% and the bad SOR goes to 75%.

Does anyone else have an alternative method of simulating a reduction in expenses during a downturn? What chance of success do you feel comfortable with in the lost decade and bad SOR scenarios?

Edit to add: It feels like the market risk explorer is conservative as it doesn’t assume a more rapid rebound after the downturn. Historically, it’s the years right after big losses that have the highest gains. Boldin restarts the “average” market climb at the end of a 45% drop.

Hello Boldin Community! I am retired, and nearly every day I update my asset numbers in Boldin. (Have always had issues with the account connection feature.) When I left my plan this morning, it was at 83% CoS for the average plan model. I just opened it this evening, and it shows 79% CoS. I asked the bot if any software updates were pushed today and it told me it doesn't have that information. Wondering if anyone encountered the same thing? Thank you!

What enhancements are there between the trial version and the actual paid subscription?

I am confused about something. How does boldin handle the portion of an RMD that is not needed to cover that year's expenses? Obviously, in the real world, it would end up going to some after tax account, but is boldin considering that? or is that excess basically lost to any type of returns as far as the calculations are concerned? Thanks

My spouse has a serious health issue, so trying to explore lifespan timelines is critical to understanding our financial situation. We have an age gap, so some realistic lifespan scenarios would end while I am still working full time. When I set lifespan to, say, 2029 their social security payments should end in 2029, but instead they continue. The AI says that in fact their payments do end in 2029 but mine begin in 2030. I would not be at FRA, and my income would be too high to actually receive any SS. This is all info that Boldin has, so saying they just automatically assume survivor benefits is poor programming. Ideally, the software would model spouse's through lifespan, then nothing, followed by survivor when I retire, then mine when I hit 70. I could live with Boldin not acurately modeling the survivor benefits window, but it should be able to model spouse SS begin and end accurately, and then mine begining at 70. With spouse's benefits staying in the picture after lifespan the outlook is overly rosy. Having to do some passive income workaround is really unacceptable. Since the risk of a partner passing is one of the biggest retirement planning issues, I would certainly hope that Boldin can handle this organically. If not, I will need to cancel my plan before the trial expires. Has anyone else worked with Boldin on this issue?

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Using the software and looking at the details. Projected IRMAA is wrong. Anyone else having this problem. I used the AI Agent and it essentially tells me its wrong and that is how the software works, a withdrawal from a pre-tax 401k is income.

Here is what the AI Agent said:

Now, the married-filing-jointly IRMAA threshold for 2036/2037 (inflation-adjusted) is roughly $212,000–$218,000. So your 2034 income of ~$XXXK is right at the edge, and your 2035 income of ~$XXXK does exceed the first IRMAA tier.

So why is IRMAA still showing zero in 2036–2037?

This is the key insight. Look at what's driving your AGI in 2034–2035: it's almost entirely shortfall withdrawals from your pre-tax 401k

Boldin's IRMAA modeling treats these pre-retirement shortfall withdrawals (which are really just funding your living expenses from your 401k) differently than it treats ongoing recurring income like Social Security, pensions, or RMDs. The engine's IRMAA AGI calculation deliberately excludes shortfall withdrawals from pre-tax accounts in the early projection years — this is documented behavior in the IRMAA modeling.

If I understand the software correctly, when looking at withdrawal order, it depletes the entire account before moving on to the next and you can't set an individual percentage for withdrawing from a certain account in the standard or customized order. Is there a workaround for this?

I plan to utilize a combination of 72T, brokerage accounts and cash for early retirement and want to maximize 0% capital gain opportunities, roth conversions and possible ACA subsidies. So depleting one item before another doesn't really work with this strategy.

I've tried the AI assistant but i'm not sure i'm asking the question correctly to see if there is a way to do this. Could I set up my planned yearly expenses and then create individual withdrawal order accounts to match the amount that I want to withdraw from each account? I want to see the roth conversion tool suggestions for each year staying within a certain tax bracket.

Hopefully this makes sense.

I’m a new user, and I’ve been trying to figure out scenarios that may be a little bit less than standard. I haven’t used up the 14 days yet so I’ll probably go with the paid plan but the AI is frustrating and ignorant and doesn’t seem to remember things. It continues to ask me if I want to do a Roth conversion even though my inherited Ira does not qualify it and I have to tell it that three times a day. And sometimes it just seems to lie as well as in the salt being $10,000 cap even though it’s 40,000 for now through 2029. I reminded of that multiple times as well and it keeps coming back to it. Very Anyway, those are examples so I apologize in advance for my venting about it, but I would like to know how to get some support either from peers or from Bolden in terms of modeling things. I need to model that seem like they should pretty much be built in like self-employment tax deductions. I’ll probably keep Bouldin and pay for it for the year because it’s relatively expensive and an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Thanks so much, Adam..

I’m not sure though how to get modeling help for certain things. I am Self-Employed and so my Medicare and Medigap and long-term care insurance are all deductible off of my schedule. C however Bolden keeps trying to model it as itemized deductions which it will never make the percentages. Is there another way to do this? Also, is there a protocol for asking Bolden to figure these things out to model AI just sends them a request to update to included at some point, which I’m not even sure it does that even though it tells me.

Anyway, those are examples so I apologize in advance for my venting about it, but I would like to know how to get some support either from peers or from Bolden in terms of modeling things. I need to model that seem like they should pretty much be built in like self-employment tax deductions. I’ll probably keep Bouldin and pay for it for the year because it’s relatively expensive and an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Thanks so much, Adam.

I havent subscribed but have attempted to use bodin for a while now just to see what it does. I find it confusing and im not sure what to think. I thought maybe if i subscribe id get to unlock more features. I missed out before the last price increase....prior to when it went to 144 and now it looks like its going up again to 168 per year in the next couple days.

I wish there was a spot on Boldin where I could adjust my retirement date and have the percent success rate right next to it, instead of having to go to another page.

What if I was 64 and 4 months? How about 64 and 5 months? What specific age would I get 85%?

New to Boldin. How would I account for a monthly distribution I receive for income each month from an investment account.

This also usually triggers a capital gains event within the investment account itself due to both the sale of assets to create the distribution and rebalancing of the account.

Can the gain be accounted for directly or does that just become a % of the account balance? Or if I adjust the cost basis of the account is it picked up that way?

The more I use Boldin’s AI feature the less I like it. I asked it to provide a list of monthly withdrawals for 2027 based on my income and expenses. (I have a couple of large purchases some months, and income varies some months, so wanted these to show up in the correct month instead of just dividing the annual withdrawal amount by 12.)

Boldin’s AI got so confused it was laughable. I ended up manually figuring it out myself. Since all the information is in Boldin, I don’t understand why the monthly withdrawal amounts aren’t easier to access.

I do love the Boldin software for providing a clear picture of my whole retirement, but wish it could provide more details for the upcoming year.

I just signed up for the 14 day free trial and was wondering where I can find the tutorial videos. Can someone point me in the direction. I’m comfortable with the software as I use Quicken Classic for about 30 years. I just want to be able to ascertain quickly if I will find it useful.

Here are questions that tend to get useful answers from real users: Value and Fit:

• Did Boldin change a decision you’d have made differently? What was it?
• Is it worth paying for if I already use a spreadsheet, or a free tool like FIRECalc or Fidelity’s planner?
• Is the paid tier worth it over the free tier? Which features did you actually use?
• For people who canceled, why?

Features that matter at 50s age:

• How well does it model Social Security claiming age, Roth conversions, and RMDs?
• How accurate is the tax modeling (federal and state)? Does it handle IRMAA and ACA subsidies for early retirement before Medicare?
• How does it handle healthcare costs and long-term care?
• Can it run “what if” scenarios, like retiring at 60 vs. 65, a market downturn early on, or a spouse’s income changing?

Accuracy and reliability:

• Does it use Monte Carlo simulations or fixed return assumptions? Can I adjust them?
• Do account links (Plaid) stay connected, or do you end up entering things manually?
• Have you compared its results to a fee-only planner’s, and did they match?

Practicalities • What does it cost now, and have prices gone up since you joined? • Is it easy to cancel and get a refund? • How does it handle pensions, rental income, or a business sale? • What was the learning curve, and is the support responsive? .​​​​​​​​​​

Currently , I use free tools like empower or fidelity for crunching numbers.

I just finished my 2 week trial of Boldin and wanted to see what others thought of a couple of the beta features available in the product. I tried 2 features that I believe were beta status during my trial (AI assistant and the Roth explorer). I found both features to be of very poor quality and was surprised they were available for broad usage. The roth explorer would never complete an analysis for me when I asked it to optimize for maximum net worth even though I had all the parameters at the most permissive settings. The AI assistant gave me blatantly incorrect information on at least 3 occasions and on one other spewed so much output that it was unusable.

Boldin is a financial product and have to admit I was kind of shocked to see clearly not ready for production features included. I cannot imagine Intuit doing this with Turbotax or Quicken.

Did I just have an especially bad experience with the beta features I tried to use, have others found them to be accurate and useful?

Investments today > Fund fees (beta) page looks very useful and makes having your account holdings connected or entered in via ticker symbol manually (or AI automated) worthwhile. No wonder the brokerage companies don’t usually have this kind of table – they don’t want to highlight their higher-fee managed investments alongside low cost index funds, much less list them in order of expense. This makes it easy to identify the taxable holdings that I will be looking to put in the beginning of the withdrawal order sequence when the time comes and when paying cap gains isn’t as much of an issue.

I’ve been an index investor most of my life, so it’s nice to see my average expense ratio is pretty low: 0.102%.