A Tool for Testing What’s Possible
A good planning tool helps you see where your money could take you—and what your choices today might change.
If you've been following along recently, over the past month or so I've been talking about what your money could become, whether your current path supports that, and what you want your money to make possible.
But at some point, you need a way to actually test the answers.
People ask questions like these all the time:
What if I retire earlier?
What if one of us works less, or quits a job?
What if we want to spend more on travel or on helping our kids?
What if we stop contributing to retirement savings for a while?
What if we increase those contributions?
What if we delay Social Security... or take it earlier?
The problem is, these questions are really hard to answer in your head. You can feel like one choice will ruin everything when it might not. Or you can assume everything is fine when actually, a change is needed.
Here's where a tool can really help.
I want to introduce you to Boldin, a DIY retirement planning program I've used for eight years. It's been a big part of helping my husband and me plan for a future where "work is optional."
It’s not a tracking app! I don’t care what you spent at Costco over the weekend. It’s about looking ahead.
Boldin lets you bring together your investment and retirement accounts, potential Social Security, pensions, other future income or anticipated windfalls, housing, spending, healthcare costs, taxes, and assumptions about things like investment returns and inflation. Then you can see how different choices could affect the long-term picture... and what you might want to do now because of what you see.
I had a funny experience with it recently. Our own projections were coming out much better than I expected, and I wasn't sure if I could trust them. So I scheduled a coaching session with someone at Boldin to review our plan and give me a sanity check.
Turns out I was sane! And that conversation led to an affiliate relationship with Boldin. So, full transparency: if you use one of my Boldin links and later purchase a paid plan, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. But know that I was using and recommending the program long before that relationship existed.
Remember the couple I told you about who discovered they had more options than they realized? That awareness came from actually modeling what their current assets could become under different scenarios.
You might discover that a choice you're scared to make could actually work. You might identify a gap early enough to change course. You might grow more confident about your retirement timing. You might give yourselves permission to make a life change, or spend more! Or simply compare two paths instead of guessing.
Sometimes the answer will be, “Yes, we can!” Sometimes, “Not yet.” Or maybe, “Let's do this instead.”
Either way, an answer is better than guessing, right?
Boldin isn't for everyone. If you're still working on more basic systems of financial management, stay there for now and build a strong foundation. We can do a basic financial analysis together without the power, or complexity, of a program like this. (If that would be helpful, let me know. It's a smaller offering I'll be communicating soon.)
But if you're ready to ask some bigger questions, or you're looking more seriously at the future and approaching retirement, this could be really useful. And confession: I'm a serious DIYer, so this kind of thing is perfect for me.
One thing to remember: a program can't make the decision for you. And it's not a crystal ball—neither am I. The projections depend on the information and assumptions you put into them. But they give you something much better than a guess.
The goal isn't to predict the future perfectly. It's to understand your choices well enough to shape it intentionally.
That's what I love about this kind of planning. It turns “someday” into something you can actually work with.
If you're curious, Boldin has a free version that honestly gives you quite a lot, including the ability to build a personalized plan and try basic “what if” scenarios. Their PlannerPlus version is currently $144 a year and adds more advanced planning features, including Roth conversion and Social Security analysis, and deeper scenario modeling.
If you try it, let me know what you think!
Dee
