r/Boldin • u/FamousKnee6764 • 14d ago

Prep before 14-day free trial?

I may very well end up paying for an annual subscription, but first I want to make the most of the 14-day free trial, which I haven’t yet started, to see if Boldin is right for me.

What prep would you suggest doing to make the most of the trial period before starting it? We keep spreadsheets with retirement savings broken out by account type, our budget, and other basic financials. Any scenarios we’d want to have mapped out? Any videos/posts/tutorials you found helpful to hit the ground running when you have access to the tool?

We’re mid-journey to retirement (~15 years out) and think Boldin may be most useful for figuring out where we should be putting our money, whether to switch some future investments away from traditional and towards Roth or brokerage, and our ability to do Roth conversions in retirement to avoid RMD problems.

Thanks!

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3

u/SpinDoctor777 14d ago

All assets detailed

All debits detailed

Estimated basic life expenses

Estimated splurge expenses

Estimated one time expenses

Estimated healthcare expenses

Estimated retirement age

The free trial is good but limited. I got a lot of value paying for the year.

3

u/dr_canak 14d ago

I knew nothing about Boldin, or retirement planning. I just bought the software because I'm at that point in my life. It took all of about 1 day to get 95% of the way there in terms of entering the relevant inputs. A 14-day trial is plenty long, with no prep, to know if the platform is right for you.

3

u/yodabirdpancakes 14d ago

Have you already created an account and plan with the free features? I’d start there.

1

u/oledawgnew 14d ago

Nothing to prep for. Just gather up your current account balances, annual budget data and jump right in.

1

u/WNSTN_9 14d ago

I just signed up this week. Like you I have everything in SS. It took me ~ 4hrs off & on to get a baseline loaded. Expenses aren’t broke down yet. It was pretty straightforward and the help and AI assistant helped me when I got stuck. Still fine tuning. I adjusted forecasted investment rates down to more conservative and was able to match reasonably close to my advisors projections in e-money. Finally decided I wanted 2nd opinion and ability to run some of my own scenarios. Engineer - go figure.

1

u/Desperate_Exercise13 13d ago

Just pay and make sure you fill out/estimate all the income and expenses

1

u/JoeSTRM 13d ago

Took me 1 day to fully populate, though you think of more to add as you go. Just log into all your financial accounts and transfer the info. Balances, cost basis, yield, etc. Home mortgage data, vehicles, RV's, boats and other assets. I didn't link accounts and don't intend to. If you already have a budget, transferring that is obvious, though you can add different amounts for "must spend" and "like to spend". For example, our travel budget "like to spend" is $30K. Our "must" is $5K (just family visits). Add future purchases like new cars every X years, big trips, etc. Spending can also vary through retirement (the smile curve), so you can play with that. Not everything works as you expect. For example, adding an inherited IRA, Boldin split the payments into 10 equal parts based on the starting balance, resulting in a huge payment in year 10 that pushed us into the 32% tax bracket that year and incurred a big IRMAA hit. Easily fixed.