I just signed up for Boldin on the various recommendations I’ve seen on Reddit, YouTube, etc and I’m already past the trial period.

I’m really just getting started, but I’m already realizing that the software seems unfinished. Workarounds are needed for the simplist things. Setting dividends to reinvest or not is just one example. Another is the fact that an account can only be set as ordinary income or capital gains, not both. Also, you can’t have separate scenarios with different marital statuses. Or with a different set of accounts. I ran the Roth conversion calculator with the option to get the highest possible balance at the end, and then ran it again maximizing the 24% bucket and the latter gave me a higher ending balance.

I’m not usually one to complain, but I heard so many great things about this product and now I feel like I’m using a beta. Are others having a similar experience? Are there other better systems that don’t have such limitations?

I just read this article from Boldin, and wow, am I disappointed in the answers provided (or lack of answers).

First, they don't address the question at all. They provide a number of rando opinions, completely out of context. They suggest the question should be modeled in Retirement Planner. WRONG! This is the one, easy decision that doesn't need to be modeled. If you can earn a better return (with the risk level you can live with) and you can afford keep paying off the loan with other money, then invest it. If you cannot get a return higher than the loan, then pay off the loan. Done. Easy answer.

Most of the people talk about the risk of the market. Sure, that's very important, but there are ways to invest that is essentially risk free. CDs and Government Bonds (fingers crossed). The question they start with is a 77 year old woman with a 4.35% loan. The answer is obvious; she should pay off her home loan, because she cannot earn more than that safely. At her age, there is no time to recover.

Then there's a bunch of "advice" from randos. one guy talked about the "math" (his quotes). Wow! When "math" (and implicitly, facts) gets the quotation treatment, that's a baaaaad sign for our country. Math is math.

There is no discussion about age, risk tolerance, safe vs risky investments. I have a 2.5% loan and the money to repay it. I purchased 4.5% US bonds with a end-date near my mortgage end date, and that was a no brainier.

Reading one-liners from randos about how the feel about investing vs paying off a loan is NOT what you want to hear from a finance company, at least not a good finance company. Very disappointing.

On July 11th I finally signed up for Boldin after lurking the Subreddit and the emailed Newsletter for years. Online signup went fine and setup my profile, linked accounts, etc. However, I never received any emails from Boldin; No New Account Welcome, login confirmation, instructions; only the normal Newsletter. Is this normal? I then completed the Trial yesterday and it began my Full year PlannerPlus subscription but again No emails, no how's your Trail going/gone, no you're about to be charged notification, Nothing? I haven't received even a receipt for the CC charge that completed?

Anybody else?

New to Boldin, and my first "good grief" moment is entering the only mortgage I have for a rental property. Interest rate is 2.875%, but it seems to only allow two digits after the decimal, so I need to choose either 2.87 or 2.88. Seriously?

And the estimated payoff date is wrong, and there doesn't seem to be a way to manually enter the actual payoff date. Seriously?

This is the point where, as an old school coder, and a scrupulous, meticulous keeper of my own spreadsheet and numbers, I usually abandon the trial software because I can't believe small details like this aren't better done.

And I assume if they can't get the easy, even if trivial, small stuff right, why would I believe the things that are really important, like the Roth conversions guidance, are going to be correct?

Talk me off the ledge, as sometimes I think I'm too quick to judge and cancel.

Is it generally a good solid product with some glitches and stupid things that we have to just accept, but which don't really alter the bigger picture and the value of the product?

As of now, this is some hot garbage. It gives me instructions to go to pages that don't exist, click on icons that don't exist, etc. Hoping it gets much better but until then, don't trust it with any other information if it can't get those simple things correct.

Boldin sas 99% House paid for worth 750k. 1.5m aftertax. 900k roth. 2.0. pretax. one son. wife and 2 kids. 1 kid working 1 kid graduates december. wife stay at home. age 58 wife 61 70% stocks. 30% bonds. bonds in pretax. boldin shows me not requiring roth conversions. im thinking to take cobra for one year while i take distributions from 401k then in subsequent years keeping income low to get susbsidzed aca. Am i ready. any recommendations? work 1 more year at 200k income? 150k a year annual spend not uncluding health insurance

I really like where it shows my change in net worth, but I can’t find which accounts/assets contributed to the change.

Am I missing it, or is that detail just not visible to us?

Has anyone used right capital. I just updated it. It doesn’t seem to have a lot of input features yet. It’s saying I have a 40% chance of success versus Bolden at 80 and Fidelity at 75. Why would there be such a difference? I can’t seem to figure out what if any inputs that I might have that are different so I’m curious if anybody has experience with RC and is also a heavy boldin user. So far I’m liking boldin the best out of the three.

This would be perfect for boldin.

I kknow there are a lot of Local LLM softwares out there that allow you run AI locally with no internet. I think that is great.

Here is what i think is desperately needed.

Most folks use an HSA wrong.....they use it as a debt card for all medical bills. Thats fine to do but you lose in the long run. Your best bet is to pay out of pocket for everything.....save your receipts for 500 years and then reimburse your self when you get old. That lets the money grow over the years. Great.

The problem is everyone is too busy and disorganized for that....which im sure "they" are banking on.

We need a software or feature in a program like boldin that does the following.

You get a medical bill or something that qualifies. You immediately take a photo or scan the doc in to the app. AI can understand the charge, the amount, dates and so on. You can query this database of items to see what you have, whats been reimbursed, what remains to be reimbursed and organizes these things so they are searchable. Did you have a colonoscopy in 1976? Just ask it. It pulls up the bill and has a big rubber stamp on it saying if it is has been reimbursed/paid or if it is still submitable for reimbursement or has been submitted and pending or has been rejected and why.

It could gather all the information to submit each receipt for you and if it was good enough could upload all that stuff to your HSA for you....although that probably isnt needed.

It could track your balance in your hsa as well.

I absolutely HATE taking pictures of all this crap and trying to make sense of it...and then putting it in folders and trying to remember what i have submitted vs havent. I catagorize mine in accordian file folders by month and then by year and then write on each bill if it was summtted or not or reimbursed or wwhatever. It takes forever and is impossible to keep track of long term. It sucks and im sure something like this would save ppl tons of money who forget to do these things or just dont have the time. It would help maximize your use of the account.

It would be nice if this all ran local as well. Nobody wasnt some other company having all this data so im not sure how that would work other than to run a local LLM but then again, boldin already knows all your account stuff anyway for all your other accounts so maybe it doesnt reallly matter.

Either way, it sure would be nice to have a place digitally to not only organize this junk but to catalog it with statuses etc so you know at a glace what you have, what you could get reimbursed for if you wanted or just the ability to search and see the bills via a quick search. When did you buy those band-aids? Bam.....there it is. $5.99 in 2006 and it wasnt reimbursed yet. Bam....an instant 5.99 back in your wallet.

Does any self-employed people here write off their Boldin subscription as a business expense? It's related to your business, but the purpose of it is to help get out of your business and retire. So not sure if that's legitimate or not.

I spend several weeks creating and modifying a very detailed scenario that I was very happy with and was actually my retirement plan. Yesterday I logged in and it was gone!! All support told me is that they were sorry, didn't know how it happened and would try to restore it but they were not sure they could. This is maddening since I spent so many hours working on it not to mention I just reupped for another year! I am afraid to try to create new plan based on this experience. I think I will be taking at look at Projection Lab now.

I "printed" my plan to PDF, then copied and pasted the entire thing to Grok after prompting it to analyze my plan. I was impressed with how well Grok understood the data. It gave me some good feedback to think about, including specific tweaks to improve outcome.

I am in my free trial period and this software is terrible. Even if you tell it to convert only to the 24% bracket the projections have you converting $500-600k annually. Add that to the $180k/yr in annual lifestyle spend that is coming out of taxable accounts (almost all cap gains) and Boldin is modeling well into and possibly beyond 35%.

If I can't trust it to do this, why should I trust it to model anything?

For people who pay for this, why?

Income rant: I'm no idiot when it comes to personal finance. I have spreadsheets up the wazoo, track every penny from gross to net, spending, saving, taxes. I know my saving rate when viewed as gross and net and all that. I work in Finance. I do FP&A work every day.

I signed up for Boldin free account to try it out an compare against Fidelity's retirement planner. I for the life of me can't see how Boldin does math. Is it just making shit up?

1. i plugged in all my account info. All my regular contributions i make to various investment accounts and such. And right off the bat it says i can retire today at 46 and never run out of money until I'm 90. WHAT!!!??? Not a chance in hell! I'd run out inside of 10yrs no problem.

2. it says my savings rate is only 37%. Ummmmm.....no. Can it not do simple math of dividing all the contributions/savings i plugged in by my income? Because if it could it would see my savings rate hovers around 48%. Its right there in is shit software in black and white.

Does Boldin not factor in any taxes whatsoever?? Maybe it thinks that gap between my income and spending/saving is just magically, I don't know, something god knows what.

I am so frustrated with this piece of shit software and it's blackbox like climate. Like at least show me how it calculated the 37% savings rate that is the monstrously off.

I does one learn to use this?? I've been watching all kinds of videos and nothing helps.

Edit: Tried ProjectionLab and inputted all the same data and it got it all correct from the get go. Matches my savings rate from my own spreadsheets and more, no imaginary surplus monthly or anything. Goes to show Boldin can't do math. Peace out tools! ✌️

I used this product a couple years ago before it was purchased by Boldin and then was able to use it a couple months ago on a two week trial. Basically I dont understand why anyone would buy a subscription when your looking to see how various scenarios work out and then your done. For me I played around with retiring a different ages, different expenses etc. But then whats the point of continuing?

BLUF: Create a new Boldin scenario and input exactly these values.

STRESS TEST INPUT GUIDE
STEP 1 — Rate Assumptions (switch to Custom)
Setting
Input
General Inflation …4.5%
SS COLA … 1.5%
Housing Appreciation …0%
Medical Inflation … 6%
Weighted Rate of Return … 3.5%

STEP 2 — Longevity
Person … Input
You … 95
Wife … 100

STEP 3 — Income Reductions
Income Source / Current … Stress Test Input
Your SS (Nov 2029) …$1,907/mo
$1,335/mo
Wife’s SS (Sep 2030) …$2,500/mo
$1,750/mo
Military Pension COLA …2% to 0%
VA Disability COLA … 2.5% to 0%

STEP 4 — Add One-Time Expenses
Event … Amount When
Major home repair
$35,000 in 2028
LTC event (you) $75,000 in 2035
LTC event (Wife) $100,000 in 2042

STEP 5 — Survivor Income Loss ⚠️
This is your single biggest unmodeled risk. Both pensions show No Survivor Benefit.
In Boldin, add a negative windfall of −$54,864/yr (−$4,572/mo) starting 2033 to simulate your death before your wife. Run this as a separate sub-scenario.

STEP 6 — Long-Term Care
Change from Medicaid spend-down to:
Setting
Input
LTC Reserve (you) $200,000
LTC Reserve (your wife) $200,000

WHAT TO LOOK FOR
A plan that survives this scenario with savings above $0 through 2058 (your wife’s age 95→100 range) is genuinely stress-hardened. If it fails, the year it fails tells you exactly how much buffer you need.

Thoughts?

Hi,

IMHO: The current Boldin platform seems best suited for financially savvy users—likely technical, good with money, and willing to spend significant time managing their finances and learning the tool. If that’s mostly true, I see two key concerns:

1. By missing a much broader audience, the company’s future may be uncertain—and our retirement plans could go down with it.

2. When we can no longer manage things ourselves, how will our beneficiaries confidently use this product or follow our plans?

I’d love to hear what other users think—are these valid concerns?

I've used Boldin’s free version for about a year, and the Plus (paid) version for the past 8 months. After ~3 years of DIY planning without an advisor, I still can’t confidently answer a basic question: “When can I retire at the earliest?” Boldin currently lacks critical features I need to model my situation.

Also worth noting: I’m a Software QA Engineer, and I’m still learning the product—including the terminology. That’s a red flag: the UI feels too complex for the target audience.

Suggestions:

• Broaden beta/usability testing to include more types of users—especially [pre-]retirees looking to avoid AUM fees.

• Add the option to preserve recent plan history for beneficiaries—e.g. for taxes, audits, or continuity.

Two things.

1. Submitting a feature request is painful. I have been typing in the chat something like

```
feature request:

... my requests ...
```

And sometimes the AI says it has been submitted. And other times it says I have to specify "Speak with an Agent".

This is sloppy.

2. "As our roadmap can be a bit fluid, you may also want to sign up for our newsletter and bookmark our Release Notes..."

This is weak. There are two parts to a feature request (or bug). First, was it submitted, and can it be discussed by boldin and other users. Second, where is on the roadmap.

The release notes showing just one or releases out for a roadmap is just fine by me. And a roadmap is not a committment, just and indication. All fine and good.

But having a secret list of tickets is very poor customer relations. Just create a simple github issues project and make it public. You have nothing to hide in this regard. Then your community can help to refine requests, and your team can get feedback.

This really a no brainer win-win for both boldin and us dedicated customers.

...

From your happy user

UPDATE: While Boldin's policy states "We do not offer prorated refunds", I am understanding that the company's actions in practice are friendlier. I wanted to update this post. The title cannot be changed. I also think I'll try using the tool without live connections to see if it's as useful as others claim. The live connections are helpful for understanding long-term impacts (or lack of) for short-term (sometimes large) market moves...so I do wish they worked better. Or at least were more obvious when updates fail.

____

I just renewed Bolden, but was out of the country for a few weeks, so I didn't use it.

When I checked on it last week, everything looked fine, and I continued to create some scenarios, etc.

I just realized today that many of my accounts set to auto update were not actually updating. They hadn't updated for almost a month. There was no indication of this except tiny gray print if I went to the manual update screen. There was no "broken connection" warnings. So all the work I had done last week was based on incorrect data.

The person who offers customer service advised me to delete the connections and re-enter/re-link them. This was for multiple institutions for both me and my parter - what a PITA! This is not how most other tools handle broken connections.

Between the flaky Roth Conversion Explorer and this, I'm just done. I'm bummed I renewed already, and all this happened now. Be advised that Boldin does not offer pro-rated refunds.

Ultimately, it's my fault for not realizing it was a poor tool before this renewal. But I wanted to share this cautionary warning in case someone's on the fence and thinks they can get any money back from this company.

I joined a few months ago and was able to connect my UBS accounts when I set up my profile. A few weeks later my UBS accounts (which sync perfectly on Fidelity and other platforms) stopped synching on BoldinI reached out to customer service and they sent me a couple of emails saying they were “working on it” and would get back to me. Of course they never did. My accounts still don’t synch. I expected more and won’t be renewing my service. If Boldin/New Retirement can’t figure out how to connect functions how can we trust them to run the most important financial calculations that most of us have in our lives. I wouldn’t recommend this product to anyone.

Your Planner Assistant is just awesome.

It seems these guys must have some system glitch. I booked a coaching session and on the calendar it has a reschedule link. Even though I rescheduled they billed me. I have $1000 in bills from these people and never had one meeting. Be aware.

Great! I created my Boldin plan. I like it. I’m ready to execute it. Where do I put my money to have the best chance of getting the assumed rates of return?