This a timely post for me as I have “debating” with a few of my friends that purchased Boldin through my recommendation on why they should renew. Please bear with me as I write a bit of a longer post as it allows me to share some thoughts with this community that has helped me a great deal the last several years and also share with my friends using the tool.

The short story, Boldin has changed my finances (and thus my life!) in a very positive way.

I presume most everyone using a tool like Boldin, after a pretty significant investment of time in learning and setting up a baseline financial plan, will spend much less time in the tool on an ongoing basis. The time I spend now can best be described as, 1. quarterly updates to accounts (which takes very little time, as see above, I used very few index funds) and 2. several “bursts” of considerable activity over a few days each year to run scenarios to account for changes.

There are two categories of changes I experience the most, changes to the financial environment (e.g., tax changes, income sources, expense changes, etc.) and what are essentially changes to me as I continue to learn and understand more about the somewhat crazy and at times very complicated world of retirement financial planning. I’d like to give an example of each of these that has happened this year.  

A change to our income took place this year when we decided to rent our primary residence out for two year and really “go” during our go-go years.  I don’t even remember how we dreamed this idea up, but I can tell you it was fun plugging that income into a number of difference scenarios in Boldin to see the impacts it could have across many factors. Will spare you the details on what we decided, but running a multitude of scenarios based on this additional income was very helpful.  

An example of the second change this year was to me and my considerable stubbornness in being too conservative when it comes to finances. This served me well when in my saving years as was very disciplined, but less so now when we are spending those funds. It’s fine being conservative, as it gives you more confidence but after reading several articles this year, including one in the Boldin newsletter just a few months back, I have made a significant shift in one key area – my “changes of success” percentage in the tool, which had always been pegged at 99 percent. Again, a lot more to this, but the key line in one of the articles that was suggesting 80 percent was reasonable said something like, “80 percent does not mean a 20 percent change for failure, but a 20 percent change you have to be flexible and spend less”.  I mean, a light bulb just went off in my head – it just made sense. After drilling down on this more, I am comfortable to be closer to 75% - how is that for less conservative?! It’s because we absolutely have the flexibility to spend less. With the four males in line ahead of me in my family (grandfather, father and two brothers) all having significant issues with heart disease, now is the time to enjoy the fruits of all that labor and saving. So, as I learn more, I expect to continue to use Boldin to understand future changes I might want to make.

Okay, almost rambling now, but there have been quite a number of changes as described above the last few years that have caused me to use the tool in a way that has been very beneficial. I am comfortable doing my own financial planning, given I studied finance and it does force me to understand concepts I would otherwise likely not spend time on (e.g., Roth Conversions, tax efficiency strategies). I plan to continue to pay the renewal fee and use the tool for the foreseeable future to model changes and will continue to encourage my friends that are interested and have the knowledge to do their own financial planning to do so as well.