FinZot

FinZot is do-it-yourself financial planning software for people who want to model a US household in much more detail than a basic retirement calculator allows. It brings income, spending, investments, pensions, Social Security, property, debt, and taxes into one long-range plan. The goal isn't to replace every decision with a single score. It lets a person see how the parts of a financial life interact over time, then compare the consequences of changing retirement dates, spending rules, conversions, withdrawals, or other assumptions. The service is built specifically for US taxpayers and models federal rules along with income tax rules for 41 states and Washington, DC.

The planning engine works year by year. Users can enter salaries, side income, pensions, benefits, investment accounts, real estate, loans, expenses, family events, and life expectancy. Investments can use real index fund history or custom return and volatility assumptions. FinZot tracks cost basis at the tax-lot level, treats fund income according to its tax character, and calculates items such as capital gains, Social Security taxation, Medicare IRMAA, ACA premium credits, required distributions, and multiple federal taxes. Its formula system can tie a value to age, balances, net worth, returns, or timing events, so a plan can react instead of holding every assumption fixed for decades.

Testing alternatives is central to the product. A paid Plus plan can hold several scenarios for a household and show them side by side, with every changed setting highlighted. Users can copy a change between scenarios and compare Monte Carlo results across them. Each simulation runs one thousand trials assembled from consecutive blocks of real market history, rather than relying only on a smooth average return. A historical replay can also show what the same plan would have done through a period such as the market conditions beginning in 1966. Results cover net worth, yearly cash flow, taxes by bracket, retirement spending, and when a plan fails under a fixed budget.

FinZot is especially relevant to households approaching retirement with decisions that cross several systems at once. Someone can compare pension elections, Social Security timing, an early retirement health insurance gap, Roth conversions, withdrawal order, or the sale of taxable investments without treating each question in isolation. It also supports planning details such as employer matches, HSAs, 529 plans, rental property depreciation, mortgage terms, survivor benefits, and state moves. Variable spending offers another view of retirement. Instead of judging only whether a fixed budget survives, it can amortize available assets over the remaining years and show a range of sustainable consumption across trials.

The interface is built for hands-on exploration. Moving a value can recalculate the plan, followed by a new set of Monte Carlo trials. Yearly cash flow views show where income comes from and where spending, tax, insurance, and investments go. Scenario comparison makes it possible to identify the exact assumption behind a changed outcome, which is more useful than comparing two unexplained success percentages. Version history supports undo and rewind. That matters in a model with many connected inputs, since users can explore a strategy without losing the plan they had before.

Plus also includes a connector for Claude. A user can describe a household in plain English, let Claude ask for missing facts, and have it create or update a FinZot plan. The connector can run projections, inspect results, build scenarios, and analyze tax or withdrawal choices. Its actions are undoable, and the resulting plan stays available in the user's FinZot account. This is a practical alternative to filling every field by hand, though the quality of the plan still depends on complete inputs and careful review. FinZot presents planning software, not a substitute for individualized tax, legal, or investment advice.

Access is freemium. The Free plan costs nothing and includes one complete plan, one scenario, the full tax engine, historical Monte Carlo analysis, pensions, Social Security, health care thresholds, version history, and cloud backup after registration. Plus costs $100 per year and expands the account to four plans with twelve scenarios per plan. It adds sharing, scenario comparison, conversion and withdrawal optimization, tax-targeted sizing, and the Claude connector. The free plan is unusually substantive, while Plus is aimed at households that need repeated comparison, family planning, or AI-assisted editing.