This blog was largely built upon Darrow’s extensive analysis of retirement calculators. Five years ago, we entered our first affiliate partnership with one of his favorite high-fidelity retirement calculators, the Excel-based Pralana Gold.

Today, I will review a new development from Pralana, the Pralana Online retirement calculator. I’m excited to share that this new product maintains the detailed planning capabilities of the original version with substantial improvements in aesthetics and user-friendliness.

Let’s take a look….

What’s New

The level of detailed analysis possible with Pralana Gold was the most common positive feedback I received over the years from users. Pralana Online is likewise loaded with detailed planning features, some of which aren’t even available in the professional financial planning software I use with my financial planning clients. 

The most common negative feedback I received about Pralana Gold has centered on two topics. The first was the fact that the Pralana Gold was Excel-based. Thus it required access to and some familiarity with Excel. It also required users to download the program and move their data to use the calculator on multiple devices. Frankly, my dislike of the Excel-based version was the reason I didn’t use and write about it more in the past.

Pralana Online solves these issues. You store your data inputs in your account which you can log onto from any device. Pralana Gold users can import their data to Pralana Online if desired.

The other negative feedback with Pralana Gold was that it overwhelmed some users. This is the other side of the detailed planning coin that other users love.

I will say that Pralana Online has a longer learning curve than other calculators I’ve used. Whether the benefits are worth the extra effort depends on your preferences for those features as the user.

It would be impossible to cover all of the features in this review. Instead, I will share some screenshots I took while getting started on the calculator to give you the look and feel for it.

I will also share a few of the features I am most excited about exploring further. If there are particular features you would like me to explore in more detail in future blog posts, please share them in the comments section.

Quick Start

I started with the “Quick Start” option and would recommend any other new users do the same. This option gets you started with data entry and provides some initial output quickly.

The Quick Start is similar to free online medium-fidelity calculators you may be familiar with. It helps you get started working with the program while avoiding being overwhelmed. The basic data entries carry over and give you a head start when you are ready to do more detailed modeling.

Basic Plan Information

The first page asks for your basic personal information including marital status, birth dates, retirement dates, and life expectancy. In the full program, you also enter children. The more detailed entries are useful for accurately modeling child tax credits and household size for various other tax benefits.

You also enter your state of residence, enabling the program to calculate your projected state income tax. You can model the impact of moving to a different state in the future if that is in your plans. In the full version of the program, you can do detailed real estate modeling.

The first non-personal assumption, the inflation rate, is also entered on this page. The program provides a default value to help you get started while enabling you to change the rate or model different rates over time if you desire more customization. 

Your Accounts

Next, you enter your account types and balances. You can name the accounts in the account description. The program gives you the ability to add or delete accounts as necessary.

You also provide a rate of return for each account type. This is useful if, for example, you hold bonds in tax-deferred accounts and invest your Roth accounts more aggressively. You would expect these asset classes and thus the accounts you hold them in to grow at different rates.

Again, Pralana Online provides defaults to help you get started quickly. I left the defaults for demonstration. The program enables much more detailed modeling of account returns outside of the Quick Start, including multiple ways to model investment returns.

Income and Expenses

Next, you model income and expenses. You can add different income sources, each with its own start and stop date and unique growth rate for the income. Multiple income streams can be entered for each individual. You also model savings into retirement accounts in the Quick Start mode.

This first page is also where you enter any pension and Social Security income. Below, I highlighted the pop-up boxes embedded at the inputs, explaining what the program wants you to enter.

Throughout the program, you can also access the user manual by clicking on the embedded question mark icons. These pop-ups are helpful to enter data more accurately and reduce your learning curve.

The final input in the “Quick Start” is your expenses. You can enter different amounts with different start and stop periods if desired. Detailed expense modeling is available in the full program.

After entering these basic inputs, Pralana Online can analyze this information and provide your first outputs. In the full version of the program, you can build out and store three different scenarios.

Analyze

I’m going to jump ahead to the analyze tab. This is what many of you are familiar with when using retirement calculators. Like most calculators, Pralana Online will provide you with a % chance of success (i.e. the likelihood your scenario concludes with >$1) as well as the median balance at the end of your plan (i.e. when you die). 

Related: Defining Retirement Success and Failure

Pralana Online performs both Monte Carlo and historical analysis. Most programs use one or the other. There are pros and cons to each method. Having both gives you more robust data.

Beyond this basic analysis, Pralana Online models and analyzes many other variables and scenarios. These include spending strategies (see screenshot), Roth conversions, optimizing your Social Security start date, and analyzing your earliest safe retirement date.

Building Detailed Financial Models

The Quick Start mode is great for familiarizing yourself with the program and entering preliminary data quickly. The real value of a tool like Pralana Online is the ability to take your time and do detailed modeling.

Even the best calculators can not predict the future. They rely on making assumptions about many unknowable variables, including:

• Your lifespan,
• Investment returns/interest rates,
• Inflation,
• Future legislation impacting taxes, health care, Social Security, etc.

That is a lot of inherent built-in uncertainty. It is important to collect and enter your data accurately. You want to avoid additional uncertainty or error when possible. Pralana Online shines with its ability to model detailed scenarios and check your data inputs.

Under the build tab, you will find extensive options to enter data and model scenarios involving your financial assets, present and future income streams, and expenses.

Checking Your Work

After two years of working extensively with clients using professional planning software, I’ve come to realize how easy it is to make mistakes when inputting data and interpreting outputs. The ability to double-check your work is invaluable.

For that reason, my favorite features are the robust options found under the “Review” tab. You can review graphical and tabular projections and create different reports.

Visualizing Trends

The graphical projections are great for spotting trends that may present planning opportunities. They can also expose things that don’t make sense but may otherwise be overlooked.

For example, below is a screenshot of a portion of the graphical tax projections. It is very easy to visualize that there is a period between 2031 and 2050 where we will pay virtually no income tax in our baseline plan.

This first prompts me to ask: Does that make sense? Reviewing the data I entered, I assumed Kim would stop her part-time work and I would stop the blog at the beginning of this period, leaving only my small part-time financial planning income until we later start taking money from tax-deferred retirement accounts. So yes, it passes the smell test.

Once I can validate the graph, visualizing this trend prompts me to think about ways to use timing strategies (i.e. Roth conversions) during this period. These strategies can then be modeled in the program.

Spotting Data Entry Errors

Pralana Online also offers extensive tabular projections. These are useful to check step-by-step when entering data.

Sometimes this double-check helps you spot errors in your data input. For example, when entering our anticipated Social Security benefits, I intuitively entered the monthly benefits as reported in our SSA accounts. When I reviewed the tabular “Cash Flows”, I noticed a small inflow of just a few thousand dollars per year decades after we stopped working. 

This immediately prompted me to check the dates that matched our Social Security start dates. I matched those numbers with our monthly benefits and noted the program was looking for annual Social Security income. I multiplied the monthly benefit by 12 to arrive at the annual benefit and returned to the tabular projections to verify that I had entered this data correctly.

These types of mistakes are easy to make when entering the amount of data required for detailed financial modeling. If not caught, these errors will substantially impact the accuracy and validity of your outputs, making this a very valuable feature of the program.

Understanding the Calculations

The tabular outputs can also help you see how the calculator arrives at its numbers. For example, when double checking my inputs I noted a period starting in 2031 where our health care expenses dropped dramatically for four years followed by six years when those costs went to zero.

I’m not complaining! But does this reflect reality? I wanted to dive into the details to understand why the numbers were presented this way. Fortunately, Pralana Online makes this very easy to do.

I opened the Healthcare Specified Expense Details and realized that Pralana Online calculates your ACA subsidy amount based on your income inputs.

In 2026, the program assumes the return of the ACA “Subsidy Cliff” as currently written in law if provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act are not extended. Because of this, the income we are modeling would exceed 400% of the Federal Poverty limit and our subsidy would drop off the “cliff” (i.e. we would not qualify for any Premium Tax Credit and thus would have to pay the full cost of our health insurance premiums) through 2030.

Of course, we don’t know what will happen with the tax laws. However, seeing this potential impact again leads to a planning opportunity. If this law reverts, we can experiment with modeling different ways to create cashflow for those years more tax efficiently.

In this way, tabular inputs help you see how the program works and then potentially use this information to improve your plan.

Reports

Pralana Online also enables the creation of a variety of reports. Admittedly, this is the part of the program I spent the least time with initially. 

One feature I love is the tax forms. Pralana generates a Form 1040 and all of the corresponding Schedules and Forms based on your data inputs.

You can compare your actual tax forms to see if there are any notable discrepancies. This could indicate errors in your data input. This is also a great way to better understand your tax situation and look for planning opportunities.

Related: Know the Flow, Pay Less Tax

Summing Up

Calling Pralana Online a retirement calculator is a misnomer. This is a high-fidelity financial modeling tool on par with, and in some ways superior to, the professional financial planning software I use with clients.

Expect to invest at least a few hours to gather your data, enter it properly, validate your initial inputs, and start to understand the outputs. If you are willing to invest the time to learn and continue to work with this software, you will find that this is a highly sophisticated financial planning tool and an incredible value at a price point of $119.

(Disclosure: Pralana is an affiliate of this blog and we are paid if you purchase through links on this site.)

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[Chris Mamula used principles of traditional retirement planning, combined with creative lifestyle design, to retire from a career as a physical therapist at age 41. After poor experiences with the financial industry early in his professional life, he educated himself on investing and tax planning. After achieving financial independence, Chris began writing about wealth building, DIY investing, financial planning, early retirement, and lifestyle design at Can I Retire Yet? He is also the primary author of the book Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence. Chris also does financial planning with individuals and couples at Abundo Wealth, a low-cost, advice-only financial planning firm with the mission of making quality financial advice available to populations for whom it was previously inaccessible. Chris has been featured on MarketWatch, Morningstar, U.S. News & World Report, and Business Insider. He has spoken at events including the Bogleheads and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants annual conferences. Blog inquiries can be sent to chris@caniretireyet.com. Financial planning inquiries can be sent to chris@abundowealth.com]

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