The Pralana Gold calculator is a robust personal financial model that contains hundreds of fully-integrated calculators and deals with every phase of your life. Its capabilities are truly unprecedented! Here are just some of its features that you probably won’t find elsewhere.


>> Provides a high degree of user control over key modeling assumptions, including marital status, life expectancy and inflation.

>> Models income and expense streams in as much or as little detail as desired. Income streams can include employment, pensions, windfalls, Social Security, annuities and miscellaneous others, and Expense streams can include personal property and rental property, children and college educations, healthcare, charitable giving (including QCDs), and miscellaneous others. The modeling of these income and expense streams deals with the nuances typical of these streams rather than simple lists of income and expenses with start and stop dates. Social Security benefits, including spousal benefits, are calculated as a function of husband and wife claiming ages and benefits at Full Retirement Ages.

>> Enables you to differentiate essential from non-essential expenses and, during your retirement years, employs variable spending strategies to dynamically adjust your non-essential spending as a function of your portfolio’s performance.

>> Models cash, taxable, tax-deferred and tax-free accounts while allowing you to specify and optimize withdrawal order and to plan scheduled withdrawals from any account. RMDs are modeled in accordance with SECURE 2.0.

>> Models your portfolio based on underlying asset classes and allocations using deterministic, randomized and historical rates of return, multiple asset allocation algorithms and appropriate taxation of account growth.

>> Models inherited traditional and Roth IRAs and the associated RMDs.

>> Models Health Savings Accounts and qualified tuition (529) plans.

>> Models personal and investment loans.

>> Calculates federal, state, FICA and NIIT taxes.

>> Calculates Part B and D Medicare premiums, including IRMAA.

>> Calculates ACA subsidies as a function of your MAGI and Second Lowest Cost Silver Plan premiums.

>> Models customized or optimized Roth conversions over a specified period while limiting annual conversions based on user-specified marginal tax brackets, capital gains brackets, IRMAA brackets and FPL multiples (to maintain your ACA subsidies). 

>> Calculates the effective buying power of your portfolio as a function of its distribution across accounts with differing taxation properties.

>> Presents its outputs in both tabular and graphical form so you can see exactly what is going on year by year, and you can view this data in terms of either today’s dollars or future dollars

>> Employs multiple analysis methods to generate a range of possible outcomes based on your detailed inputs. Deterministic projections are useful for comparing alternatives and getting an idea of where you are headed based on fundamental assumptions; however, since these projections generally fail to account for the effects of market volatility, Monte Carlo and Historical analyses are incorporated to provide a range of likely outcomes based on a simulation of market volatility. All these methods are integrated within the tool to present you with a comprehensive view of the future.

>> Enables you to examine the long-term effects of specific historical market return sequences so you can test your plan against the worst bear markets that have ever actually occurred.

>> Models survivor scenarios.

>> Facilitates your decision-making process by making it easy for you to define and compare major alternatives as well as small variations.

>> Includes advanced capabilities such as consumption smoothing, Social Security start age optimization, earliest safe retirement date calculations and life insurance recommendations.

>> Produces PDF outputs to enable printing and sharing of your plan.


Here’s an informal video walkthrough of Pralana Gold:

high-fidelity modeling of accounts & portfolios

Account-level rates of return are derived from user-specified asset classes and asset allocations

High-fidelity modeling of income & expenses

Deals with the nuances of numerous types of income and expense streams and performs detailed Federal and State income tax and FICA tax calculations.

user flexibility in definition of tabular outputs

You can design up to 8 unique views into Gold’s rich collection of output data and arrange the data in each view in the order of your choice and with customized headers.

Analysis & optimization

A range of likely outcomes is calculated by fixed-rate, Monte Carlo and historical analysis methods. These results are enhanced with optimized Roth conversions, optimized withdrawal order, Social Security start age and retirement start age calculations.