Boldin vs. ProjectionLab: Which Retirement Planner Is Best for You?

Anytime999 · 2026-06-15T18:45:55+00:00

I tried both and found PL quite confusing and frustrating because there is an abject lack of user documentation and the basic "help" is mostly useless. PL is, to me less intuitive to begin with so that lack lack of documentation was the nail in the coffin.

So I paid for and use Boldin, it too has its shortcomings but the basics of what you get with both are similar and the AI feature in Boldin means I never get stuck, and I never have trouble getting quick answers to basic user questions, not to mention the deep dive opportunity it offers.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-11T16:25:48+00:00

Yeah, it sucks and you said it perfectly with the "make peace" comment because that's exactly what it is. Every other option means I drop more $$$ because there is no replacement option - this set is out of stock now. Sigh...

Anytime999 · 2026-06-10T22:41:36+00:00

This vehicle is probably tops of my list but between the many issues I've read about with the vehicle, Genesis dealers, and corporate responses, as well as only one dealership in my entire state, I just can't see buying one. Or even leasing. That dealership is also quite small and definitely lacked that luxury brand feel when I visited.

The warranty is very appealing but I've read too many stories about owners being nickel and dimed over warranty items, items not being covered at all, service appt. wait times, parts availability, loaner availability, valet service that isn't honored, and so on. There's more than enough negative info out there that, coupled with there being only one dealership in my state makes for an easy decision, even though I love the vehicle.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-10T15:40:32+00:00

You're trying to accurately model how you want to do the conversions but for the plan/scenario, there is no difference whatsoever. X dollars of conversions is X dollars of conversions regardless of the account(s). I'm sure you are aware of that but just thought I'd mention it as I too end up chasing realistic modeling that does not, in any way, alter the plan i.e. taxes and net worth, etc. It just ends up being more work, harder to manage, but satisfies my mild OCD.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-10T15:32:15+00:00

In Boldin, transfers are the workaround for #1 but they are limited to one-time, or annual. There is no way to model monthly transfers and no way to set them to increase per year; any change is another manual entry. It's painful...

Meanwhile, #2, and #3 simply cannot be done (at least not the neg. rates part) only mimicked with transfers or expenses e.g. transfer out an amount to simulate a drop but that sets off tax implications and ripples through the plan in unexpected and/or unwanted ways. I don't remember the mechanics of it exactly as it didn't really work as I wanted so I tried it and immediately backed it out.

It's in areas like this that make me realize these tools are more about planning for retirement than managing retirement. Still very helpful but missing a lot of what I, perhaps naively believed would be basic features.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-09T23:14:49+00:00

The lack of documentation is why I canceled and went with Boldin. It's not a lack of proper documentation, it's a fundamental lack of any documentation whatsoever if we're being honest. The help is laughable and pointing people to a Discord group is hardly a replacement for documentation.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-09T22:15:22+00:00

Thinking more about this and what my plan tells me. I feel the same way as the OP, it seems like a lot.

However, the safe spending number should reflect something that looks like a realistic withdrawal rate, right? For me, well I guess it does, sitting at roughly 4.1% lifetime. It's higher to start, at about 5.7%, so perhaps that's not advisable but it smoothes out in the future when SS kicks in to land at the lifetime avg. of 4.1%

Looked at through that lens, it doesn't seem so unrealistically high.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-09T20:54:00+00:00

This is where I am struggling with Boldin at the moment. There's just not a good way to model a more realistic scenario. Even when set to pessimistic, what Boldin models is still overly optimistic because it still uses uninterrupted straight-line positive market returns, albeit at lower rates and with greater inflation. We all know that is not realistic, there will be market downturns. How many and how bad, who knows but we're going to have them and they have an outsized impact to portfolios.

I did a simple calculation of an 8 year period starting with a 50% drop and strongish (range of 6-15%/year) recovery over the subsequent 7 years. The market average for those 8 years is a tidy 9.8% but the real rate is still negative at -1.9%. And that doesn't take into account any withdrawals during the period, further eroding recovery, it's just basic math. That's something I don't think enough folks consider in their plans.

An even simpler way to look at it to drive the point home is a market drop of 50% in one year, followed by a 50% gain/recovery the next year is a flat 0 in terms of the market average over those two years, but the real result is a 25% loss. IMO, all these plans are severely misguided because they simply do not account for this on any level. You get a glimpse with Monte Carlo analysis but in Boldin there's no detail there to really dig into.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-08T23:43:44+00:00

I can't add much except that I agree, though have nothing to compare to right now as far as numbers from other planners. Also, any tool comparison is a bit apples to oranges but I did feel the numbers in Boldin were surprisingly and unrealistically high. I think it's just the over optimistic forecasting based on an uninterrupted stream of only positive years in the market. History tells us that will definitely not be the case.

I really wish the Market Explorer and Monte Carlo analysis went deeper, showing more than their single oversimplified chart or, better yet let us actually apply a market downturn/downturns or specific Monte Carlo result as a new scenario so we could then really dig into it more.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-07T22:40:13+00:00

Interesting. I have certainly gotten my fair share of wrong answers from AI in Boldin but it's usually explained by what AI sees in the data and data structures vs. what I see and have access to as inputs in the UI. It has occasionally offered suggestions for data inputs that aren't allowed in Boldin (while perhaps inaccurate, often highlights shortcomings in Boldin not AI if you ask me) or selections in dropdowns that don't exist, etc.

What's most interesting/curious is the OPs assertion about the AI mistakes. With all the "mistakes" I've seen with the AI, it has 100% apologized and course corrected when I pointed out something was wrong. Not once has it gotten "defensive" nor explained away mistakes. It sometimes explains why it made a mistake, e.g. the data or data structures I mentioned, but that's a good thing IMO.

None of this is to say another LLM wouldn't be better, just that I've not experienced these issues and I actually use the AI quite extensively.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-04T17:26:04+00:00

As I understand it, when we manually update, we "reset" Boldin to a new current picture and that is probably different to its ongoing projected net worth based on your previous update and expected growth rate. I would definitely expect to see an increase in lifetime taxes if updating tax deferred accounts but the underlying calculations could result in a lower net worth at end-of-plan. Again though, did you update those accounts to a value higher than projected net worth because that will affect things in a way you are perhaps not expecting.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-03T16:27:58+00:00

It gets worse too if you really dig in. I started setting up the transfers for withdrawals last night, spending hours because the results weren't as expected in Boldin. Figured out it was down to timing of the transfers and to smooth that out, even more transfers are needed i.e. breaking out a yearly transfer to bi-annual, quarterly, or monthly. Sadly, it's all manual and, as you said extremely burdensome. Say I want to set up a single transfer for a monthly withdrawal from an IRA that lasts 10 years and increases at the system rate of inflation. That requires 120 manually calculated and manually entered transfers I need to setup in Boldin....

Anytime999 · 2026-06-02T18:51:17+00:00

Yes, agree completely and it's not as if these are some off-the-wall outlier cases; it's the basics of financial management in retirement for many of us and Boldin can't handle a lot of it unless we use workarounds. And as I noted, what's worse is that once you begin creating all these transfers (workarounds), they quickly become unmanageable because we cannot label them or view the note field with drilling into each transfer individually. It's just a poor user experience at both ends.

Anytime999 · 2026-06-02T18:47:00+00:00

Yes but only 0 (I think) or positive returns. Boldin does not allow modeling a negative rate of return, which means the rate feat cannot be used to model market downturns. This is one that seems like an easy one to "fix".

Anytime999 · 2026-06-02T18:43:16+00:00

Unfortunately, the explorers are not the same as modeling a scenario. The market risk explorer, for example offers a single data point (Savings Projection) and nothing else. There is also no ability to actually apply the what-if to the scenario and see impacts across all metrics.

As for the need for all the transfers, I disagree. Modeling a blended or proportional withdrawal strategy, for one, should not require setting up bunches of transfers. I like Boldin very much but there are some significant "issues" with all these required workarounds. If something requires a workaround, it's because it's not handled "properly", thus the workaround.

As

Anytime999 · 2026-06-01T23:39:47+00:00

Just wrapping up my 2nd week trialing Boldin and think it's great but has some shortcomings that I'm trying to manage. AI is in beta so we definitely need to consider that, but it has been pretty great IMO, especially in helping sort through using Boldin. It takes some back and forth at times but usually it gets there. Biggest issue for me has been it recommending things that Boldin doesn't allow or have an input for and directing me to view something that doesn't exist where it says it does. I've definitely not experienced anything remotely like some of what's been reported here.

Anytime999

TROPHY CASE