Boldin vs ProjectionLab vs Empower: how to pick the right retirement planner

When you’re planning for retirement, the tools you use can either make everything feel clearer… or completely overwhelming. Three of the most popular options right now are Empower, Boldin, and ProjectionLab. They all try to answer the same big question: “Am I on track?” But they approach it in very different ways.

In this guide, I’ll walk through how each planner works, what it does especially well, and the kind of person it’s best suited for. By the end, you should have a good sense of which one fits your needs (and your personality) right now.

First, what all three tools have in common

Before we get into the differences, it helps to know what Empower, Boldin, and ProjectionLab all do reasonably well:

They all let you:

• Build a long-term retirement plan that projects your savings, investments, and spending over time

• Run Monte Carlo simulations (thousands of possible futures) to estimate your “chance of success”

• Model income sources like Social Security, pensions, annuities, part-time work, and inheritances

• Include different types of expenses, from basic living costs to one-time or time-limited spending (like travel in early retirement)

• Create and compare multiple scenarios (retire earlier vs later, spend more vs less, etc.)

Where they really differ is in simplicity vs depth, especially around taxes and fine-grained control over your plan.

Empower: simple, free, and fast to set up

If you want to get a solid retirement projection without learning a complex tool, Empower is the easiest place to start.

How Empower works

Empower’s standout feature is its simplicity. You can either link your real accounts (401(k)s, IRAs, taxable accounts, bank accounts, credit cards) or enter them manually. Once your balances and investments are in, Empower automatically:

• Looks inside your mutual funds, ETFs, and stocks to figure out your asset allocation

• Uses that asset mix to estimate your expected rate of return

• Pulls all your accounts into a single retirement plan

• Runs 5,000 simulations to estimate your chance of not running out of money

You then add a few key pieces:

• Your retirement spending (entered as a monthly amount)

• Social Security (either use Empower’s estimate or plug in your own from your statement)

• Other income (pensions, consulting income for a few years, annuities, etc.)

• Extra expenses (one-time or recurring, like travel for the first 10 years of retirement)

On the assumptions side, Empower keeps things very light:

• One overall effective tax rate (federal + state + local combined)

• An inflation rate

• Life expectancy

That’s basically it. You can also create alternative scenarios (work longer, spend less, retire earlier) and compare them.

What Empower does best

1. Ease of use

You can have a working retirement plan in about 10 minutes. There aren’t many knobs to turn, which is the point. You get a clear, high-level view of whether you’re on track.

2. Automatic asset allocation and returns

Because Empower can look inside your funds and ETFs, it can estimate your asset allocation and expected returns for you. You don’t have to guess a rate of return.

3. It’s free

That’s a big deal. You can use it as a long-term planning tool without paying a subscription.

Where Empower is limited

Empower trades depth for simplicity. You don’t get:

• Detailed tax modeling (no separate federal, state, bracket-specific insights, or Roth conversion optimization)

• Fine-grained control over withdrawal strategies

• Advanced estate or Medicare IRMAA (income-related Medicare surcharge) analysis

If you’re more than 10 years from retirement and mainly wondering, “Am I roughly on track?” Empower is usually more than enough. If you’re closer to retirement or want to dive deep into tax strategies, you’ll probably outgrow it.

Boldin: powerful, guided, and very thorough

Boldin (often written as Boldin Planner) is a much more sophisticated retirement planning tool, but it tries hard to stay approachable. It’s especially good if you want depth without feeling lost in a wall of settings.

Guided setup with a smart sidebar

The first thing I like about Boldin is its left-hand sidebar. It walks you through your plan in a logical, step-by-step way:

• Assets and debts: savings, investment accounts, retirement accounts, other assets, non-mortgage debt

• Home and real estate: primary residence, planned moves (like relocating to a lower-tax state), other properties, future purchases

• Expenses: recurring expenses, different phases of spending over your life

• Income: work income, Social Security, pensions, etc.

• Assumptions: growth rates, inflation, other global settings

As you move down this list, Boldin updates projections like net worth or lifetime income in real time. The layout makes it easy to feel like you haven’t forgotten anything important.

Built-in AI helper

Boldin has an “Ask” feature that acts like a built-in guide in two ways:

• How-to help: You can ask how to model something (like a rental property), and it explains how to do it using the actual features in Boldin.

• Plan suggestions: You can ask questions like, “Would Roth conversions help this year?” and it looks at your plan data, runs forecasts, and gives suggestions you can then tweak and test.

It’s not a substitute for your own judgment or a tax pro, but it’s a very helpful starting point when you’re trying to understand your options.

Coaching and a “planning score”

One of my favorite parts of Boldin is the coaching system. It scans your plan and flags things you might want to review:

• Plan accuracy: For example, it might suggest adding expense phases to reflect that your spending will change over time.

• Potential mistakes: It can spot overlapping expenses that might be double-counted or notice that you have no healthcare costs before Medicare.

You also get a planning score, which doesn’t measure your chance of success, but how complete and robust your plan is. It nudges you to fill in missing pieces (like non-mortgage debt, if you have any) and to explore scenarios and transfers. It’s a nice way to turn “I think I did this right” into “I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything major.”

Investment analysis and asset allocation

Boldin now has an investments section that works a bit like Empower’s portfolio view. Whether you connect accounts or enter them manually, Boldin can:

• Look through your holdings (like a target-date fund) and break them into stocks vs bonds, U.S. vs international, large cap vs small cap, and more

• Show your asset allocation by account and overall

They’re also building out a “glide path” feature so you can model how your asset allocation changes over time. It’s still early, but it has a lot of potential.

Flexible budgeting and spending phases

Boldin gives you several ways to handle spending:

• Basic budget: One or a few broad expense categories (like “core living” and “discretionary”). Simple but effective.

• Detailed budget: Walk through categories and set specific amounts. You can tag each as “must spend” or “like to spend,” then run your plan using just the must-haves or the full lifestyle.

• Estimated spending (beta): A newer feature that lets you model how spending naturally changes over time—higher in early retirement, then gradually slowing down in mid or late retirement.

Boldin also includes short videos and explanations (from within the app) that walk you through how to use these tools. It’s very “hand-holdy” in a good way.

Deep insights: taxes, IRMAA, withdrawals, and more

The insights section is where Boldin really shines for people who like to dig into the numbers. You can see:

• IRMAA projections: How your income might trigger higher Medicare premiums in certain years

• Lifetime cash flow: Income, expenses, and savings over your entire plan

• Net worth over time

• Detailed taxes: When your taxes are low or high, which can help you spot good windows for Roth conversions or capital gains harvesting

• Retirement withdrawals and required minimum distributions (RMDs)

For example, if you see a stretch of low-tax years before Social Security and RMDs kick in, that might be an ideal time to convert some traditional IRA money to Roth. If you want more background on why your retirement tax bracket might be lower than you expect, this ties in nicely with why your retirement tax bracket is probably lower than you think.

Who Boldin is best for

Boldin is a great fit if you:

• Want a powerful planner but still appreciate guidance and structure

• Like the idea of coaching and a “completeness” score for your plan

• Care about taxes, IRMAA, and detailed cash flow, but don’t necessarily want to hand-tune every last variable

If Empower feels too simple and ProjectionLab (below) feels a little too “power user,” Boldin is a very nice middle ground.

ProjectionLab: maximum control and tax optimization

ProjectionLab is the most advanced of the three. It’s built for people who enjoy rolling up their sleeves and really stress-testing their retirement plan, especially from a tax and withdrawal-strategy perspective.

Timeline-based interface with rich detail

ProjectionLab organizes your plan around a visual timeline. You can choose what you want to see—net worth, taxes, income, a specific account—and watch how it changes year by year.

For any given year, you can click in and see:

• Taxable income and what’s driving it

• Breakdowns of income sources (RMDs, dividends, interest, wages, etc.)

• Details for specific items, like inherited IRA RMDs, shown in their own chart

The level of detail is extremely high, but the timeline and charts keep it understandable if you’re comfortable with numbers.

“What if” engine for quick comparisons

Like the other tools, ProjectionLab lets you create and compare different plans. But it also has a powerful “what if” mode:

• You turn on the comparison engine

• Make changes (for example, lower living expenses from $150,000 to $100,000)

• Immediately see how those changes affect your plan across multiple metrics

You’re not creating a new saved plan yet—you’re just temporarily testing changes. When you’re done, you can:

• Keep the changes in your current plan

• Revert back as if nothing happened

• Save the modified version as a brand-new plan

This makes it very easy to experiment without cluttering your account with a dozen saved scenarios.

Tax optimization engine

This is where ProjectionLab really stands out. It has an optimization feature that can search through thousands of strategies to improve your plan according to a goal you pick, such as:

• Lower lifetime taxes

• Higher after-tax legacy at the end of your plan

You can choose how aggressive you want the optimization to be and let it run. It will test different combinations of:

• Roth conversions (how much, and when)

• Capital gains harvesting in low tax years

• Withdrawal shielding (using Roth distributions strategically to avoid higher brackets)

When it’s done, you can apply the winning strategy to your plan and see:

• Exactly which Roth conversions it recommends each year

• Where it suggests tax-gain harvesting (if enabled)

• How your end-of-plan after-tax legacy changes

If you’re interested in squeezing the most out of your retirement dollars through smart tax planning, this is a very powerful feature. It pairs nicely with thinking about long-term tax planning in general, like the ideas in what “I am the house” really means for your money right now.

Estate and end-of-plan modeling

ProjectionLab also gives you a detailed way to think about what happens at the end of your plan:

• Estimate the tax haircut on tax-deferred accounts so you can compare after-tax amounts

• Model step-up in basis for taxable accounts

• Include costs to liquidate assets

• Factor in charitable giving or estate expenses

This lets you see a more realistic picture of what your heirs (or charities) might actually receive after taxes and costs.

Monte Carlo with historical or statistical returns

ProjectionLab’s Monte Carlo analysis has a couple of unique twists:

• You can choose between historical return sequences or a normal statistical distribution for your simulations.

• You can see which individual simulations succeeded or failed, then drill into them to see what went wrong (or right)—stock returns, bond returns, inflation, and more.

This is helpful if you want to understand not just “My success rate is 85%,” but also “What kind of market and inflation paths cause my plan to fail, and how bad is it when that happens?”

Milestones: more than just retirement age

ProjectionLab has a milestone system that goes beyond “What year do I retire?” You can define milestones like:

• Out of all non-mortgage debt

• Out of all debt entirely

• When savings equal 25x annual expenses (a common FIRE marker)

• Any custom event you want to track

When you run Monte Carlo, ProjectionLab shows you not just whether you reach these milestones, but at what ages in different scenarios:

• Median age for retirement vs best-case vs worst-case

• How widely the timing of a milestone can vary depending on returns and inflation

It’s a very visual way to see how uncertain the future can be—and how robust (or fragile) your plan is.

Who ProjectionLab is best for

ProjectionLab is ideal if you:

• Love digging into detailed tax and withdrawal strategies

• Want to optimize for things like lowest lifetime taxes or highest after-tax legacy

• Are comfortable with more complexity and a steeper learning curve

• Are within 10 years of retirement (or already retired) and every tax decision matters more

How to choose: Empower vs Boldin vs ProjectionLab

Here’s a simple way to think about which tool might be right for you.

Pick Empower if…

• You want something free, fast, and simple

• You’re 10+ years from retirement and mostly asking, “Am I on track?”

• You don’t need detailed tax or estate modeling yet

• You like that it automatically pulls in your accounts and estimates returns from your asset allocation

Pick Boldin if…

• You want a robust but guided retirement planner

• You appreciate coaching, AI help, and a planning score to make sure you didn’t miss anything

• You care about taxes, IRMAA, and detailed insights but don’t necessarily want to hand-build every optimization

• You like a structured, step-by-step interface

Pick ProjectionLab if…

• You’re ready for deep tax and withdrawal strategy planning

• You want to optimize for lower lifetime taxes or higher after-tax legacy

• You’re comfortable with complex tools and detailed settings

• You like experimenting with many scenarios and understanding the full range of outcomes

Can you use more than one?

Absolutely. In fact, many people do:

• Use Empower as a free, ongoing dashboard to track your investments and a quick “sanity check” on your retirement plan.

• Use Boldin to build a thorough, well-structured plan with strong coaching and insights.

• Use ProjectionLab when you’re ready to really push on tax optimization and advanced scenarios.

You don’t have to become a spreadsheet ninja or a tax expert to build a solid retirement plan. The key is choosing a tool that matches where you are right now—your stage of life, your comfort level, and how deep you want to go.

Whichever planner you choose, remember: the goal isn’t perfection. It’s clarity and confidence that you’re moving toward the kind of retirement—and financial freedom—you actually want.