Scenarios are one of the most powerful tools in Boldin. They let you stress-test your plan, explore opportunities, and model "what if" futures—without ever disturbing the foundation of your plan. Understanding how scenarios work will help you get the most out of them.

Every Boldin plan starts with one baseline scenario. Think of it as your plan's home base—the most accurate, up-to-date picture of your financial life as it actually exists today.

Your baseline should reflect reality: your real account balances, your actual marital status, your current home. It's not a projection or a best-case wish. It's the foundation everything else is built on.

PlannerPlus subscribers can create up to nine additional scenarios from your baseline. Each one is a separate exploration—a way to ask a specific question about your future without changing what you know to be true about your present.

Scenarios aren't meant to be alternative versions of your life. They're meant to be questions. Good scenarios have a clear purpose:

Each scenario starts from the same honest baseline and models a specific set of different assumptions. That's what makes the comparison meaningful.

Some information in Boldin stays the same across every scenario. This is intentional.

Shared across all scenarios:

These fields represent facts about your life right now—not assumptions about your future. Your current account balance isn't a variable. Your marital status isn't a scenario. Allowing these to change by scenario wouldn't give you a different future to explore; it would just give you wrong information to plan from.

A plan built on a different starting point isn't an alternative scenario. It's a different plan—and probably not a useful one.

Most of the forward-looking elements of your plan are fully adjustable per scenario. This is where the exploration happens.

These are the variables that drive your outcomes. Change them freely within each scenario to answer the question that scenario is designed to explore.

Because account balances are shared, you can't directly lower a balance in just one scenario. But you can achieve the same effect using a one-time expense.

To simulate a reduced account balance in a particular scenario:

This reduces the effective balance for that scenario without changing your baseline or any other scenario. It's a precise, clean workaround that keeps your data honest.

You can reassign any scenario as your new baseline at any time. Boldin requires that exactly one scenario always serves as the baseline—it can't be deleted or left empty.

If you want to start completely fresh and go through onboarding again, contact the Services Team and they'll reset your plan.

Keep your baseline current. Update it whenever something real changes—a new account, a different balance, a life event. The more accurate your baseline, the more meaningful your scenarios become.

Give each scenario a clear question. The best scenarios have a purpose. Name them accordingly ("Early retirement at 62," "Conservative returns," "Roth conversion strategy") so you always know what each one is testing.

Don't try to model everything in one scenario. If you want to test both early retirement and aggressive Roth conversions, consider whether those belong together or as two separate explorations.

Use rate of return adjustments for market scenarios. Optimistic and pessimistic scenarios apply rates of return on a per-account basis, giving you detailed, account-level accuracy rather than a blunt portfolio-wide adjustment.

Can I have more than one plan in Boldin? No. Boldin supports one plan per subscription. Scenarios within that plan are how you model and compare different futures.

Why do scenarios share data with my baseline? Because scenarios are explorations of your future—not rewrites of your present. Sharing factual, present-tense data ensures that every scenario starts from the same honest foundation, which is what makes comparing them meaningful.

Why can't I change my account balance in just one scenario? Your current account balance is a fact, not an assumption. Changing it in one scenario wouldn't give you a different future to explore—it would give you a different (and inaccurate) picture of where you stand today. Use the one-time expense method described above to model balance changes within a specific scenario.

What's the difference between a scenario and a baseline? The baseline is your plan as it actually is. Scenarios are structured "what if" questions built on top of it. Think of the baseline as your anchor and scenarios as the directions you can explore from there.