Nels vs. Boldin
Boldin — formerly NewRetirement — is retirement planning software. It models decades: Monte Carlo simulations against your savings, when to convert to a Roth, which accounts to draw from first, whether the numbers still hold if you stop working at sixty-two. Nels is a budget for the month you are currently in. Both are about money. They are not answering the same question.
| Feature | Nels | Boldin |
|---|---|---|
| Price | From $3/month or $30/year | Free, then from $144/year |
| Log expenses by chatting | Yes | No |
| Writable budget, not just a dashboard | Yes | No |
| Envelope / zero-based budgeting | Yes | No |
| Household sharing | Yes | Partial |
| Audit log of changes | Yes | No |
| Automatic bank syncing | Partial | Yes |
| Passwordless sign-in | Yes | Yes |
| AI spending insights | Yes | Yes |
| Savings and debt goals | Yes | Yes |
| Human financial advisors | No | Yes |
| Retirement projections | No | Yes |
Yes · Partial · No
Compared using publicly available pricing as of 2026-07-28. Boldin
Who each one is for
Boldin is for someone who has accumulated enough to have a retirement question worth modelling and would rather answer it themselves than hand it to an adviser. Nels is for a household that wants to stop overspending between paydays. The first is a decision you revisit a few times a year; the second is something you touch most days of the week.
What Boldin does better
Its projection engine, entirely. Monte Carlo analysis, Roth conversion modelling year by year, withdrawal sequencing, and tax optimisation across a whole retirement — Nels attempts none of this, and its own row in the table above says so. Boldin also has a free tier where Nels has none, and an option to bring in a certified financial planner for a flat fee if you want the software's conclusions checked by a human. On long-range planning there is no contest, because Nels is not in the race.
The honest verdict
Complementary, on different time horizons. Boldin tells you whether you can retire at sixty-two; Nels is how you do not overspend in July. Knowing your plan survives a bad decade does not stop the grocery budget going sideways, and a tidy month tells you nothing about whether your savings rate is enough. If you can only pick one, pick by which problem is actually costing you money right now: the far one or the near one.
Frequently asked questions
Is Boldin the same as NewRetirement?
Yes — the company renamed itself to Boldin and the software is the same lineage. The legal entity is still NewRetirement, Inc. doing business as Boldin, which is why the old name keeps turning up in search results.
Does Nels do retirement projections?
No, and it does not pretend to. Nels tracks and plans current spending. There is no Monte Carlo simulation, no withdrawal strategy, no Roth conversion modelling. If those are what you are shopping for, Boldin is a far better use of your money than any budgeting app, including this one.
Could I use both?
That is a reasonable setup and probably the most honest answer here. Boldin for the long-range plan, revisited when something changes; a budget like Nels for the monthly execution that decides how much actually reaches the savings the plan assumes. Boldin's free tier makes trying that combination cheap.