ProjectionLab gets recommended very often in FIRE communities. And it genuinely deserves the praise.
If you're the right person, at the right stage in your FIRE journey.
The challenge is that most people discover it before they're at that stage, get overwhelmed by the setup, and either abandon it or conclude that FIRE planning is more complicated than it is.
This review is honest about both things: what ProjectionLab does exceptionally well, and when it's more tool than you need.
What ProjectionLab Is
ProjectionLab is a financial independence and retirement planning application. You model your financial life — income, expenses, savings rate, asset allocation, Social Security timing, Roth conversions, tax brackets, inheritance scenarios — and it projects forward in time, running your plan through Monte Carlo simulations and historical backtests to show the probability of your portfolio surviving your retirement.
To be completely transparent, following ProjectionLab's founder on X was one of the inspirations for me to start Wealth Potion, so I have a lot of respect for his product and what he's building.
It's $9/month or $109/year for the full version. There's a free tier that lets you explore the interface without saving your work. And ProjectionLab offers some slick options if you prefer to save your data locally vs. in the cloud.
My understanding is that the product was created specifically for the FIRE community, and it shows. The terminology, the scenarios it's built to handle, the depth of the tax modeling — it's clearly built by someone who has thought seriously about financial independence planning at an advanced level.
What ProjectionLab Does Exceptionally Well
Monte Carlo simulations
This is perhaps their killer feature. ProjectionLab runs your retirement plan through thousands of randomized market scenarios to calculate the probability of your portfolio lasting as long as you need it to. Instead of assuming a flat 7% return, it models the variance — the bad sequences of returns, the early crashes, the slow recoveries — and tells you what percentage of scenarios end with money left.
This is genuinely sophisticated and useful for advanced FIRE planners. Most simple retirement calculators assume average returns. Monte Carlo simulations show you the real distribution of outcomes.
Scenario modeling
You can model multiple futures simultaneously. What happens if you retire at 50 vs. 55? What if your spending increases by 20% after kids leave home? What if you do a Roth conversion ladder over the next five years? What if you take Social Security at 62 vs. 70?
The interface lets you toggle between scenarios and see the projected impact clearly. For someone seriously planning the mechanics of their drawdown strategy, this is genuinely valuable.
Tax modeling
ProjectionLab models federal income tax, capital gains tax, and state income tax through your retirement years. It handles Roth conversions, required minimum distributions, and the interaction between different account types.
Most people in the accumulation phase don't need this yet. But if you're five to ten years from retirement and thinking about account sequencing — which accounts to draw from and in what order to minimize lifetime tax — this is where ProjectionLab earns its cost.
Historical backtesting
Beyond Monte Carlo, you can backtest your plan against actual historical market periods — running your strategy through the 1929 crash, the 1970s stagflation, the dot-com bust, the 2008 financial crisis. It tells you how your plan would have survived the worst real-world sequences of returns in modern history.
Where ProjectionLab Might Not Fit Your Needs
Steep learning curve
ProjectionLab is not a tool you open and immediately understand. The setup requires you to model your financial life in significant detail: all income sources, expense categories, asset accounts, tax assumptions, Social Security estimates. Done properly, the initial setup takes several hours.
And to be clear, this is not a dig at ProjectionLab. As someone who worked in SaaS for over 10 years, this is a challenge that almost every software company faces. It is always a trade-off between adding more functionality (usefulness) at the expense of complexity (learning curve).
With that said, for someone early in their financial journey, the setup process itself can be clarifying — it forces you to think through things you haven't modeled before. But it also means there's a real barrier between installing the app and getting useful output from it.
It's overkill for the accumulation phase
Monte Carlo simulations are genuinely valuable when you're deciding when to retire and how to structure your drawdown. They're less relevant when you're 30 years old trying to figure out whether your current savings rate is high enough to reach financial independence.
The question "am I on track?" doesn't require 10,000 simulated retirement scenarios. It requires knowing your FIRE number and your current trajectory. ProjectionLab can answer that, but it's like using a surgical scalpel to cut a birthday cake — it works, but something simpler probably gets the job done just as well, and with less complexity.
It's designed for a planning stage most Wealth Potion readers haven't reached yet
Starting at $9/month, ProjectionLab isn't expensive. But it's designed for a user who is actively planning the mechanics of early retirement — when to stop working, how to sequence withdrawals, how to handle healthcare pre-Medicare. That's a reader who already has a substantial portfolio ($500k+) and is thinking seriously about exit timing.
If you're building toward $100k or $250k invested, the planning that matters most is simpler: know your FIRE number, know your savings rate, track whether the gap is closing. You don't need a Roth conversion ladder yet.
Who Should Use ProjectionLab
Use ProjectionLab if:
- You have $500k or more invested and are actively thinking about when and how to retire early
- You want to model Roth conversions, Social Security timing, or healthcare cost scenarios
- You want Monte Carlo simulation and historical backtesting, not just average-return projections
- You're willing to invest several hours in initial setup to get high-quality output
It's probably overkill if:
- You're in the early-to-mid accumulation phase — building toward $100k or $250k invested
- You haven't yet maxed your tax-advantaged accounts or settled on a core investment allocation
- The main thing you need to know is your FIRE number and whether you're on track to hit it
The Honest Alternative for Earlier-Stage Builders
If you're in the accumulation phase — income growing, savings rate climbing, portfolio compounding but not yet at the scale where drawdown strategy is the pressing question — you might prefer a simpler solution:
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Know your FIRE number. Annual expenses × 25 = the portfolio size that generates enough passive income to cover your lifestyle indefinitely (the 4% rule). If you spend $60k/year, your FIRE number is $1.5M. That's the target on your map.
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Track the gap. Net worth today vs. your FIRE number. The gap tells you how far you are and whether your savings rate is closing it fast enough.
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Model your timeline. Given your current portfolio, savings rate, and expected return, how many years until you hit the number? This is what the Financial Freedom Calculator at app.wealthpotion.com is built to show — quickly, without a three-hour setup.
These three things — number, gap, timeline — are what matters in the accumulation phase. ProjectionLab can model all three, but it'll give you 50 other things to think about at the same time, most of which aren't relevant yet.
The Wealth Potion Financial Freedom Calculator isn't trying to compete with ProjectionLab. It's a different tool for a different phase: free, fast, and designed to answer the accumulation-phase question — "am I on track and when do I get there?" — without modeling your optimal Social Security filing date.
ProjectionLab vs. Boldin
The other frequently cited FIRE planning tool is Boldin (formerly NewRetirement). It's in the same category as ProjectionLab but with a different emphasis: Boldin focuses more on holistic retirement planning — healthcare, Social Security optimization, estate planning — while ProjectionLab leans harder into investment modeling and Monte Carlo simulation.
Boldin's paid tier is $120/year vs. ProjectionLab's $109/year. For people primarily interested in investment and FIRE modeling, ProjectionLab has the edge. For people closer to traditional retirement age who need healthcare and Social Security planning, Boldin may be more relevant.
Neither is the right starting point for someone in their 20s or early 30s still building their initial investment base.
FAQ
Is ProjectionLab worth the $9/month? Yes, if you're in the active planning phase for early retirement — say, within 5–10 years of your target date with a substantial portfolio. If you're earlier than that in the accumulation journey, it's more tool than you need right now. Bookmark it and come back when the questions it answers become the pressing ones.
Is there a free version of ProjectionLab? Yes. The free tier lets you use the full interface but doesn't save your data between sessions. You can explore the tool and run projections without committing, but you'll need the paid tier to maintain an ongoing plan.
What's the best free FIRE calculator? For a quick FIRE number and timeline: Wealth Potion's Financial Freedom Calculator is free and requires no setup beyond your income, expenses, and current portfolio. For free Monte Carlo simulation, FireCalc (firecalc.com) is the long-standing community favorite — less polished than ProjectionLab but genuinely useful and free.
What's the difference between a FIRE calculator and a FIRE planning tool? A FIRE calculator answers a specific question: given these inputs, when do I reach financial independence? A FIRE planning tool like ProjectionLab models your entire financial future — taxes, withdrawals, account sequencing, scenario comparisons — so you can optimize the path, not just see the destination date. You need the calculator first. You need the planning tool when the destination is close enough that the path matters.
Does ProjectionLab include Bitcoin or alternative assets? You can add custom assets manually. ProjectionLab doesn't have native Bitcoin price tracking, but you can model a Bitcoin position as a manual asset with your own return assumption. For portfolios that are heavy in Bitcoin or real estate, the manual entry approach works but requires updating periodically. Bitcoin-native investors might find this inconvenient.
The Bottom Line
In my opinion, ProjectionLab is excellent software. Kyle does great work and clearly understands FIRE planning very well. If you're serious about early retirement planning and have the portfolio to make the detailed modeling worthwhile, it's worth every dollar.
But a lot of people aren't at that stage yet. If you're firmly in the accumulation phase — building, not withdrawing — and the questions that matter most to you are simpler: what's my number, am I on track, how do I close the gap faster?
For those questions, start with the Financial Freedom Calculator. Come back to ProjectionLab when you're running Roth conversion scenarios or want a clean Monte Carlo simulation.
Know your financial independence number and track your progress toward it — Wealth Potion's tools are free to use.