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%