Fantastic comparison and explanations. Thank you! I want to mention that every time I've had a question using Boldin, the response time via chat has been less than 5 minutes. Very impressive.
What I would have liked to see is after entering all the portfolio details in Pralana, whether the projections for savings, expenses, taxes, etc come out similar to those in Boldin. If they're significantly different, is it obvious why?
Excellent video Rob! I purchased the online version a month ago and as you said it will require an investment of time to fully understand/unleash the power of the tool. Coincidence I spent 2 hours today trying to figure out how to switch from simple to advance portfolio modeling. Looking forward to future videos and thanks for this one.
Rob, thanks for the review. I have been looking forward to this. I subscribe to both Pralana and Bolden. For me, Pralana is a better product. I agree that Bolden provides a more refined user interface and more extensive graphical output. I also agree that Pralana can have some quirkiness, such as needing to rerun the Mote Carlo simulation to lock-in changes to the baseline analysis, like updates to the Roth Optimization. However, Pralana has features that Bolden doesn’t have, that I believe are important to a high-fidelity output. I think some of the user interface quirkiness may be due to this starting as an Excel based tool, that is now migrated to a web interface, while allowing users to migrate their Excel files in to the new web version and keeping all the same functionality. I would say that if you are accustomed to the Excel version, you feel right at home using the web version. At 34:00 you start a discussion on how rates of return in various accounts can affect the result of Roth conversion. This is discussed pretty extensively in the Pralana User’s Manual in the chapter “Modeling Your Roth Conversions” in the subsection “The Effect of Asset Allocations on the Evaluation of Roth Conversions” The manual states: “To get a good comparison of the benefits of a Roth conversion using the account level asset location mode (i.e., mode 1), you need the same allocation for each account type because this will ensure a consistent overall allocation before and after the conversion. Arguably, a better approach is to use the overall asset allocation mode (i.e., mode 2) to evaluate Roth conversions because it automatically maintains a desired asset allocation while still allowing you to generally control asset locations for optimizing tax efficiency.” I think you mention that this raises “complexity” with using Pralana. For me this is an essential functionality of Pralana as it allows me under mode 2 to accurately model a Roth conversion. The reason for this is that I can force Pralana to maintain my overall asset allocation considering all account, while also forcing certain accounts to have a specific allocation, e.g., 100% stock in Roth. This is exactly what I am planning to do in real life. Rob, you have mentioned many times that we want our Roth accounts to “get a fat as a tick,” so we want to keep potentially all stocks in this account. However, we might also want an overall allocation across all accounts to be 60/40. Mode 2 in Pralana will allow this and then do a Roth Optimization based on these constraints. At 36:46 you point out that under mode 2, changing a specific account asset allocation will change result of the Optimization. If this did not happen, the program would be doing something wrong.
I would argue that one of the most important parameters that a user should be able to set is asset allocation, and Pralana allows you to do this in two ways in mode 1 (specific to each account) and mode 2 (overall and specific to each account based on set priority). I do not believe Bolden allow the user to specifically set asset allocation, except in a backhanded way by allowing you to set the rate of return in each account. It also seems to me that Boldin would suffer same problem during Roth Optimization that Pralana does in Mode 1 if rates of return (asset allocation) are not the same in tax deferred and Roth accounts. In fact, for me, that inability to specifically set asset allocation in Boldin makes its useability much more limited. Further its inability to dictate an overall asset allocation into the future, makes its Roth Optimization makes me question the value of the Roth Optimization results it is giving me. I look forward to you doing more content on Pralana and doing some apples to apples comparisons with other programs.
Good review of the differences between the tools. @RobBerger - do you think it’d be possible to load same data into both and review the results? Like, how each thinks the end of Plan would look. Or, what the flows look like.
I've been looking forward to this video! I came across a book recommendation the other day that walks through creating a plan for a fictitious couple using Pralana. It's been a great additional resource as I started creating my own plan. The name of the book is Plan Your Money Path: Create Your Own Financial Plan by Bill Hines. I haven't found a ton of info outside of the user manual and liked the approach the author took in the book. I'm really curious to see how my plans compare between Boldin and Pralana.
Thanks Rob, looking forward to more videos on Pralana. I have been trying out both Pralana and Bolden. I agree Pralana is more complex but so far I find it easier to see the details behind the scenes. They are quite responsive to all questions and suggestions.
Great video Rob. First please don't apologize for a thorough job. If a complicated topic like retirement modeling needs to be explained it takes time. I recently subscribed for a free trial with Boldin, but I have to give Pralana a shot. I am detailed oriented and I like you can specify things in Pralana. So far what I don't like in Boldin is the fact that it assumes the standard deviation once you provide a growth rate. I like the coach feature in Boldin and the way it estimates long term care costs. However, it assumed a huge withdrawal from my portfolio at age 90 for LTC without me specifying anything, I am not sure why. I also don't see the need in bolding to specify optimistic and pessimistic rates of return given the fact that we are running monte carlo simulations. Specifying a rate and s.d is the right way IMO. Love to get your thoughts. I don't understand why you would need to dumb down the growth rates in Pralana to get better Roth conversion results. I did not quite understand that. What happens if I model my portfolio using advanced mode with more realistic growth rates (my tax deferred has lower growth rates than roth for example) and run roth conversion? Can you explain the downside in a reply? Once again thanks for taking the time to do this!
I use Boldin and it suites my primary needs. Through my advisor I have access to Right Capital. It seems like basically the same thing, but there are a lot more advisors on TH-cam that also use Right Capital so it's easy to see how their examples would work on my savings. The tool I really want to know more about is Income Lab. My advisor uses that to give me an idea of what my spending could be and I don't see its Dynamic Spending strategy in any of the other tools I'm using. Thanks for the deep dive and I hope that maybe you'll do videos on Right Capital and Income Lab.
That was really useful. Thank you. I'm a Boldin user and feel one of its deficiencies (in my opinion) is that it doesn't have the option to use historical data. I may switch to Pralana just for that - among other features. Thanks again.
I started with Boldin then after trying Pralana, I cancelled my subscription to Boldin. Pralana is so much more powerful. Boldin does look prettier so it is more suited for the less technically savvy. But for those that like to see the calculations under the hood (the user manual explains it all), Pralana is for you. Pralana is for the power user. It is like an automatic transmission in car vs a manual transmission. You get more performance out of the manual if you know how to drive it.
I get your analogy but in truth "You get more performance out of the manual if you know how to drive it" is no longer the case. You certainly get more fun but not more performance anymore (car enthusiast). 🙂 BTW i went with Projectionlab. Just like it all. I got lost in Bolden and the customer support was awful.
I am a fan of being able to dig into the details and tweak parameters to suit my situation. However, I can see having this many levers to pull leading to analysis paralysis.
When I trialed NewRetirement (now Boldin) about a year ago (Sep 2023), it couldn't handle qualified dividends, ACA subsidy trade-offs for Roth conversions, tax exempt bonds, and state income taxes. I believe Pralana will be able to do these for me and I've just been waiting for the online version to mature a bit before giving it a try.
@Rob Berger your analysis that Pralana opens the door to input errors is spot on. I teach human error and Human Organizational Performance....this seems to be a weakness in the program to me.
Great video. I have BoldIn but some of the things there are also confusing and you don't know how some of the numbers came out. If Parlana shows all formulas and numbers in spreadsheet, to me it is better than pretty graphs of Boldin.
Rob, One thought: I am somewhat surprised that you like and want to use the same ROR across all account types when Roth optimizing. Let's assume we practice Asset Location Optimization. Thus, lower ROR assets belong in IRA's and growth asset's belong in Roth. So, there is an embedded (and real) reason to use different ROR's across account types. I understand that this'll tilt toward more Roth conversions. However, it also leans toward greater endpoint wealth realization. Note: I've happily used the spreadsheet Pralana for 3 yrs. Your review highlights that the web based version is another giant step up in capabilities. I was not impressed with Boldin's free version (no Roth conversion functionality).
We have Boldin, it works for examining all kinds of different scenarios. I mean, how much time do you really want to spend splitting hairs? My feeling was once you figure your situations out you pretty much have a plan to follow. It did show us that we needed to withdraw more now as to not have such big RMDs later. If your retirement consists of Brokerage, 401k and IRA accounts and some SS, it will help you look over everything. Better than paying a financial advisor! Don't know if there is a reason to keep it long term though.
Great job in exlaining the intricacies of Pralana. Iwish you would have highlighted the costs of each and if the free versions are any good for initial analysis.
Free versions are rarely usable or high-fidelity, for important decisions like this. These tools are both high-fidelity and incredibly inexpensive for the value they provide, the massive savings and avoiding big mistakes, if they're configured properly (big caveat there).
I think for Pralana at least, it's really a whole-life financial planning tool, not a "retirement calculator" even though that's the original name. Many of my clients are young career DIY types that are using Pralana to game out their entire financial path, including future children, homes, and FIRE early retirement.
Hi Rob. Great video. Could you do a similar one for OnTrajectory vs Boldin? I think Boldin comes out ahead but very curious how they match up with your thorough analysis of both. Thanks.
While beyond the scope of this initial review, I wanted to add that I ran into what I think is a limitation as to how Pralana Online handles 529 accounts. Our child is currently in college, and I found that Pralana assumes all college costs come from a configured 529 plan. We are using the 529 to only partially pay for college with the rest coming from income and other savings. The workaround is to set the yearly college expense to match the actual funds in the 529. Unfortunately this does not work so well for college years already in progress. Our solution was to completely ignore the 529 feature and to treat the account as tax free.
Every year I am seeing that my mutual funds have a higher percentage of payouts at year's end for short-term and long-term gains. Historically, this trend was negligible and not noteworthy, but now, it is becoming a problem with some of the funds. The good news is that it is in the retirement account, so I am not getting hit with a tax bill. The bad news is that excessive sell offs over time signal that the fund could end up selling good assets to pay off excessive redemptions instead of having new buyers assume those assets to avoid a selloff. So what I am asking is, should I start to move my assets from mutual funds to ETFs that have far less frequent gains distributions paid out? If so, do I do it before or after this year's gains are paid out (in theory, it should be the same NAV to me, and I don't have a tax issue). Thoughts?
I would love to see Rob compare the RBC product to Boldin or others. Maybe he does not because it is related to a specific advisory firm. It’s a pretty handy user friendly product to me.
The problem I have with Boldin is Scenario. The program auto enters all asset/savings accounts. You cannot have different assets/savings values. You can if you enter then print that outcome and then go back to the original value to compare
For your expenses, property related expenses are tied to the properties, which is very nice since we often change cars, houses, etc. Medical expenses goes in that area. For other expenses (groceries, etc) you got to the Phased page, as in phases of your life. They will differ from when you're working with kids still in the house to when you're a young healthy go-go retiree to when you start slowing down. A high fidelity tool has to account for that. If you want a finer look at your spending/cash flow, now that Mint is gone I really like (and use) Simplifi. It's great.
I'd wonder if it is paying the taxes owed upon conversion from Taxable. If so, the return rate on the taxable would affect the amount of money available to pay for a conversion. That would change the planned series.
I recently got Bolden… are there security concerns linking accounts? I’m manually entering my data for now. Not sure how it’s calculating roth conversation strategies without knowing my tax situation
That's a big pet peeve of mine. These are long-range planning tools, not daily/monthly budgeting tools or investment tracking tools. Therefore, I can see no reason to link your accounts. The big advantage of Pralana is there's none of that. I don't even use last names when I build plans for clients. No account numbers, etc. Update your start of year balances each January when doing the annual update. Very safe!
All of these tools, including most advisor-only tools, fail at Roth conversions because they only consider one type of tax rate at a time. They need to incorporate something similar to Range Calc from Holistiplan and then you would target a total marginal tax rate that includes all of the taxes at a given income level (extra taxable SS income, LTCG tax phase-in, loss of ACA subsidies, IRMAA, NIIT, etc.) It is possible for the effective marginal tax rate to be 60-70% when "maxing out the 22% tax bracket". I also don't see how it is acceptable for Boldin to have a hidden mystery standard deviation for returns when doing Monte Carlo analysis.
Pralana does show an effective tax rate that factors in the other stuff (NIIT, AMT, etc) so that's helpful. You can definitely control or view the guardrail factors with Roth conversions in Pralana, such as IRMAA for Medicare, premium tax subsidies for ACA, LTCG rates, etc. You can also set your own parameters around those. It's really fine-grained in that area.
Fantastic comparison and explanations. Thank you! I want to mention that every time I've had a question using Boldin, the response time via chat has been less than 5 minutes. Very impressive.
What I would have liked to see is after entering all the portfolio details in Pralana, whether the projections for savings, expenses, taxes, etc come out similar to those in Boldin. If they're significantly different, is it obvious why?
Excellent video Rob! I purchased the online version a month ago and as you said it will require an investment of time to fully understand/unleash the power of the tool. Coincidence I spent 2 hours today trying to figure out how to switch from simple to advance portfolio modeling. Looking forward to future videos and thanks for this one.
Rob, thanks for the review. I have been looking forward to this. I subscribe to both Pralana and Bolden. For me, Pralana is a better product. I agree that Bolden provides a more refined user interface and more extensive graphical output. I also agree that Pralana can have some quirkiness, such as needing to rerun the Mote Carlo simulation to lock-in changes to the baseline analysis, like updates to the Roth Optimization. However, Pralana has features that Bolden doesn’t have, that I believe are important to a high-fidelity output.
I think some of the user interface quirkiness may be due to this starting as an Excel based tool, that is now migrated to a web interface, while allowing users to migrate their Excel files in to the new web version and keeping all the same functionality. I would say that if you are accustomed to the Excel version, you feel right at home using the web version.
At 34:00 you start a discussion on how rates of return in various accounts can affect the result of Roth conversion. This is discussed pretty extensively in the Pralana User’s Manual in the chapter “Modeling Your Roth Conversions” in the subsection “The Effect of Asset Allocations on the Evaluation of Roth Conversions”
The manual states: “To get a good comparison of the benefits of a Roth conversion using the account level asset location mode (i.e., mode 1), you need the same allocation for each account type because this will ensure a consistent overall allocation before and after the conversion. Arguably, a better approach is to use the overall asset allocation mode (i.e., mode 2) to evaluate Roth conversions because it automatically maintains a desired asset allocation while still allowing you to generally control asset locations for optimizing tax efficiency.”
I think you mention that this raises “complexity” with using Pralana. For me this is an essential functionality of Pralana as it allows me under mode 2 to accurately model a Roth conversion. The reason for this is that I can force Pralana to maintain my overall asset allocation considering all account, while also forcing certain accounts to have a specific allocation, e.g., 100% stock in Roth. This is exactly what I am planning to do in real life. Rob, you have mentioned many times that we want our Roth accounts to “get a fat as a tick,” so we want to keep potentially all stocks in this account. However, we might also want an overall allocation across all accounts to be 60/40. Mode 2 in Pralana will allow this and then do a Roth Optimization based on these constraints. At 36:46 you point out that under mode 2, changing a specific account asset allocation will change result of the Optimization. If this did not happen, the program would be doing something wrong.
I would argue that one of the most important parameters that a user should be able to set is asset allocation, and Pralana allows you to do this in two ways in mode 1 (specific to each account) and mode 2 (overall and specific to each account based on set priority). I do not believe Bolden allow the user to specifically set asset allocation, except in a backhanded way by allowing you to set the rate of return in each account. It also seems to me that Boldin would suffer same problem during Roth Optimization that Pralana does in Mode 1 if rates of return (asset allocation) are not the same in tax deferred and Roth accounts. In fact, for me, that inability to specifically set asset allocation in Boldin makes its useability much more limited. Further its inability to dictate an overall asset allocation into the future, makes its Roth Optimization makes me question the value of the Roth Optimization results it is giving me.
I look forward to you doing more content on Pralana and doing some apples to apples comparisons with other programs.
Good review of the differences between the tools.
@RobBerger - do you think it’d be possible to load same data into both and review the results?
Like, how each thinks the end of Plan would look. Or, what the flows look like.
I've been looking forward to this video! I came across a book recommendation the other day that walks through creating a plan for a fictitious couple using Pralana. It's been a great additional resource as I started creating my own plan. The name of the book is Plan Your Money Path: Create Your Own Financial Plan by Bill Hines. I haven't found a ton of info outside of the user manual and liked the approach the author took in the book. I'm really curious to see how my plans compare between Boldin and Pralana.
Thanks Rob, looking forward to more videos on Pralana. I have been trying out both Pralana and Bolden. I agree Pralana is more complex but so far I find it easier to see the details behind the scenes. They are quite responsive to all questions and suggestions.
Great video Rob. First please don't apologize for a thorough job. If a complicated topic like retirement modeling needs to be explained it takes time. I recently subscribed for a free trial with Boldin, but I have to give Pralana a shot. I am detailed oriented and I like you can specify things in Pralana. So far what I don't like in Boldin is the fact that it assumes the standard deviation once you provide a growth rate. I like the coach feature in Boldin and the way it estimates long term care costs. However, it assumed a huge withdrawal from my portfolio at age 90 for LTC without me specifying anything, I am not sure why. I also don't see the need in bolding to specify optimistic and pessimistic rates of return given the fact that we are running monte carlo simulations. Specifying a rate and s.d is the right way IMO. Love to get your thoughts.
I don't understand why you would need to dumb down the growth rates in Pralana to get better Roth conversion results. I did not quite understand that. What happens if I model my portfolio using advanced mode with more realistic growth rates (my tax deferred has lower growth rates than roth for example) and run roth conversion? Can you explain the downside in a reply? Once again thanks for taking the time to do this!
Thank you, Rob, for this excellent analysis and introduction to Pralana.
I use Boldin and it suites my primary needs. Through my advisor I have access to Right Capital. It seems like basically the same thing, but there are a lot more advisors on TH-cam that also use Right Capital so it's easy to see how their examples would work on my savings. The tool I really want to know more about is Income Lab. My advisor uses that to give me an idea of what my spending could be and I don't see its Dynamic Spending strategy in any of the other tools I'm using. Thanks for the deep dive and I hope that maybe you'll do videos on Right Capital and Income Lab.
That was really useful. Thank you. I'm a Boldin user and feel one of its deficiencies (in my opinion) is that it doesn't have the option to use historical data. I may switch to Pralana just for that - among other features. Thanks again.
I started with Boldin then after trying Pralana, I cancelled my subscription to Boldin. Pralana is so much more powerful. Boldin does look prettier so it is more suited for the less technically savvy. But for those that like to see the calculations under the hood (the user manual explains it all), Pralana is for you. Pralana is for the power user. It is like an automatic transmission in car vs a manual transmission. You get more performance out of the manual if you know how to drive it.
This is exactly why I chose Pralana.
I get your analogy but in truth "You get more performance out of the manual if you know how to drive it" is no longer the case. You certainly get more fun but not more performance anymore (car enthusiast). 🙂
BTW i went with Projectionlab. Just like it all. I got lost in Bolden and the customer support was awful.
I am a fan of being able to dig into the details and tweak parameters to suit my situation. However, I can see having this many levers to pull leading to analysis paralysis.
When I trialed NewRetirement (now Boldin) about a year ago (Sep 2023), it couldn't handle qualified dividends, ACA subsidy trade-offs for Roth conversions, tax exempt bonds, and state income taxes. I believe Pralana will be able to do these for me and I've just been waiting for the online version to mature a bit before giving it a try.
@Rob Berger your analysis that Pralana opens the door to input errors is spot on. I teach human error and Human Organizational Performance....this seems to be a weakness in the program to me.
Great video. I have BoldIn but some of the things there are also confusing and you don't know how some of the numbers came out. If Parlana shows all formulas and numbers in spreadsheet, to me it is better than pretty graphs of Boldin.
Thank you for doing these comparisons and product reviews.
I enjoy them. Pralana is an incredibly complex tool. I don't think I've done it justice, but am working on my videos.
Pralana for the win!
Rob, One thought: I am somewhat surprised that you like and want to use the same ROR across all account types when Roth optimizing. Let's assume we practice Asset Location Optimization. Thus, lower ROR assets belong in IRA's and growth asset's belong in Roth. So, there is an embedded (and real) reason to use different ROR's across account types. I understand that this'll tilt toward more Roth conversions. However, it also leans toward greater endpoint wealth realization. Note: I've happily used the spreadsheet Pralana for 3 yrs. Your review highlights that the web based version is another giant step up in capabilities. I was not impressed with Boldin's free version (no Roth conversion functionality).
Into year 2 with Boldin, works well.
We have Boldin, it works for examining all kinds of different scenarios. I mean, how much time do you really want to spend splitting hairs? My feeling was once you figure your situations out you pretty much have a plan to follow. It did show us that we needed to withdraw more now as to not have such big RMDs later. If your retirement consists of Brokerage, 401k and IRA accounts and some SS, it will help you look over everything. Better than paying a financial advisor! Don't know if there is a reason to keep it long term though.
Thanks Rob! Whew! I think I'll stay with Bolden 😆
Great job in exlaining the intricacies of Pralana. Iwish you would have highlighted the costs of each and if the free versions are any good for initial analysis.
Free versions are rarely usable or high-fidelity, for important decisions like this. These tools are both high-fidelity and incredibly inexpensive for the value they provide, the massive savings and avoiding big mistakes, if they're configured properly (big caveat there).
Thanks Rob
Question: can you comment on which tool might be more appropriate for accumulation stage versus decumulation (pre retirement versus post retirement)?
I think for Pralana at least, it's really a whole-life financial planning tool, not a "retirement calculator" even though that's the original name. Many of my clients are young career DIY types that are using Pralana to game out their entire financial path, including future children, homes, and FIRE early retirement.
Hi Rob. Great video. Could you do a similar one for OnTrajectory vs Boldin? I think Boldin comes out ahead but very curious how they match up with your thorough analysis of both. Thanks.
Great stuff
While beyond the scope of this initial review, I wanted to add that I ran into what I think is a limitation as to how Pralana Online handles 529 accounts. Our child is currently in college, and I found that Pralana assumes all college costs come from a configured 529 plan. We are using the 529 to only partially pay for college with the rest coming from income and other savings. The workaround is to set the yearly college expense to match the actual funds in the 529. Unfortunately this does not work so well for college years already in progress. Our solution was to completely ignore the 529 feature and to treat the account as tax free.
Every year I am seeing that my mutual funds have a higher percentage of payouts at year's end for short-term and long-term gains. Historically, this trend was negligible and not noteworthy, but now, it is becoming a problem with some of the funds. The good news is that it is in the retirement account, so I am not getting hit with a tax bill. The bad news is that excessive sell offs over time signal that the fund could end up selling good assets to pay off excessive redemptions instead of having new buyers assume those assets to avoid a selloff. So what I am asking is, should I start to move my assets from mutual funds to ETFs that have far less frequent gains distributions paid out? If so, do I do it before or after this year's gains are paid out (in theory, it should be the same NAV to me, and I don't have a tax issue). Thoughts?
I think Retirement Budget Calculator is the best. But I'm biased. :)
I would love to see Rob compare the RBC product to Boldin or others. Maybe he does not because it is related to a specific advisory firm. It’s a pretty handy user friendly product to me.
@ he promotes Empower (personal capital) and it’s an advisory firm.
The problem I have with Boldin is Scenario. The program auto enters all asset/savings accounts. You cannot have different assets/savings values. You can if you enter then print that outcome and then go back to the original value to compare
Nice Review, could you comment on the budgeting portion of Pralana?
For your expenses, property related expenses are tied to the properties, which is very nice since we often change cars, houses, etc. Medical expenses goes in that area. For other expenses (groceries, etc) you got to the Phased page, as in phases of your life. They will differ from when you're working with kids still in the house to when you're a young healthy go-go retiree to when you start slowing down. A high fidelity tool has to account for that. If you want a finer look at your spending/cash flow, now that Mint is gone I really like (and use) Simplifi. It's great.
I'd wonder if it is paying the taxes owed upon conversion from Taxable. If so, the return rate on the taxable would affect the amount of money available to pay for a conversion. That would change the planned series.
I recently got Bolden… are there security concerns linking accounts? I’m manually entering my data for now. Not sure how it’s calculating roth conversation strategies without knowing my tax situation
That's a big pet peeve of mine. These are long-range planning tools, not daily/monthly budgeting tools or investment tracking tools. Therefore, I can see no reason to link your accounts. The big advantage of Pralana is there's none of that. I don't even use last names when I build plans for clients. No account numbers, etc. Update your start of year balances each January when doing the annual update. Very safe!
Thanks @Emancipare … at 59, I’m rebuilding my plan after a divorce. Trying to figure out what software to use
All of these tools, including most advisor-only tools, fail at Roth conversions because they only consider one type of tax rate at a time. They need to incorporate something similar to Range Calc from Holistiplan and then you would target a total marginal tax rate that includes all of the taxes at a given income level (extra taxable SS income, LTCG tax phase-in, loss of ACA subsidies, IRMAA, NIIT, etc.) It is possible for the effective marginal tax rate to be 60-70% when "maxing out the 22% tax bracket".
I also don't see how it is acceptable for Boldin to have a hidden mystery standard deviation for returns when doing Monte Carlo analysis.
Pralana does show an effective tax rate that factors in the other stuff (NIIT, AMT, etc) so that's helpful. You can definitely control or view the guardrail factors with Roth conversions in Pralana, such as IRMAA for Medicare, premium tax subsidies for ACA, LTCG rates, etc. You can also set your own parameters around those. It's really fine-grained in that area.