An honest Boldin alternative: how Futurez compares

Futurez is $89/year with everything included: one plan, no tiers, no add-ons. Boldin’s full-featured PlannerPlus plan is $144/year. For the complete toolkit, Futurez costs about $55 less a year.

The catch, stated plainly: Boldin has a real free Basic tier ($0), and Futurez does not. Instead, Futurez gives you a 14-day free trial of the entire product (not a stripped-down preview), with a card collected at signup and nothing charged until the trial ends. So Boldin wins “start for free and stay free at a smaller scope”; Futurez wins “try everything for two weeks, then pay less for the whole thing.” If a permanent free tier is a hard requirement, that’s a real point for Boldin.

Most of what separates these two lives in how each one builds a “possible future.” Futurez runs a fixed 1,000 market scenarios, but the point isn’t the count. It’s that each scenario is a full, internally-consistent economic history rather than a string of independent random returns:

• Stock returns have fat tails and lean to the downside, so real crashes happen and run deeper than melt-ups run high.
• Crises cluster across multiple years: sustained drawdowns like 2000–2002 and 2008–2009, not isolated one-year dips.
• Stocks, bonds, rates, and inflation move together, the way they actually do.
• The near term is deliberately cautious. For roughly the first decade, Futurez doesn’t assume history’s long-run average return. It marks expectations down to the forward-looking consensus the major asset managers publish, because today’s valuations compress what’s likely next. It’s a model that would rather under-promise.

That last point is the philosophical difference: Futurez is calibrated to lean to the safe side, and it publishes how it was tested. Boldin offers Monte Carlo simulation too, with adjustable assumptions, though only on its paid PlannerPlus plan. This isn’t “they don’t do Monte Carlo.” It’s that Futurez’s whole design goal is a conservative, auditable model, and we show our work on a dedicated methodology page rather than asking you to take it on faith.

Both tools now have a built-in AI assistant. Boldin has Boldin AI inside your plan; Futurez has its own in-app AI chat that can answer questions and make edits. Where Futurez goes further is letting you bring the assistant you already use:

• Connect your own AI. Link Claude or ChatGPT through Futurez’s MCP server and ask your assistant to run what-ifs against your real plan: “what if we both retired two years early?” It edits the plan, re-runs the projection, and reports the new odds, all inside the assistant you already talk to. Because it runs on your own AI subscription, that usage isn’t metered by Futurez.
• Write a rule by describing it. Type “do a Roth ladder from age 55 up to the 12% bracket,” or “if the market’s been strong, retire a year early,” and Futurez writes the logic; you approve it before it runs. Rules can read each year’s actual market performance and respond to it, the way a real person would.
• Build a chart by describing it. “Show effective tax rate vs. total income each year,” and Futurez drafts it for you to review and save.

The connect-your-own-AI workflow is Futurez’s distinct approach here. If “talk to my financial plan from Claude or ChatGPT” sounds like how you’d want to work, that’s the piece to weigh.

There’s a lot of common ground, and it’s worth naming:

• Both are serious DIY planners, not just calculators. Monte Carlo projections, detailed inputs, and real scenario testing — for people who want to drive their own plan rather than hand it to an advisor.
• Both take tax seriously. Boldin models Roth conversions and tax-smart withdrawal strategies; Futurez models federal and 42-state income tax, RMDs, IRMAA, Social Security, and QBI automatically inside every projection.
• Both model real households: two people, joint and individual accounts, dependents. Futurez additionally lets income and expense dates follow named life milestones, so “healthcare costs start at Medicare” or “this income stops when my partner retires” model themselves.
• Both include an in-app AI assistant for asking questions about your plan in plain English.

An honest comparison names the other tool’s strengths:

• You want a free plan. Boldin’s Basic tier is $0. Futurez has no permanent free tier — just the 14-day full trial.
• You want your accounts to sync automatically. On its paid PlannerPlus plan, Boldin links your financial accounts (through a service called Meld), so balances update on their own. Futurez, by design, doesn’t connect to your bank; you refresh balances yourself with a fast, one-account-at-a-time Quick Balance Update. If auto-syncing is what you want, Boldin does it and Futurez doesn’t.
• You want access to a human. Boldin offers paid coaching and advisor services (Boldin Advisors), plus classes and an established community. Futurez is pure software for planning it yourself — no advisor access.
• You value a longer track record. Boldin, formerly NewRetirement, has been around for years with a large user base. Futurez is new.

Weighing more than one tool? See our ProjectionLab comparison too.