FAQ

Should I purchase MaxiFi Planner instead of ESPlanner?

MaxiFi Planner is not just a web-based version of ESPlanner. Both MaxiFi Planner Standard and Premium offer more. With the new web-based MaxiFi, users experience a modern program interface which makes the experience of entering data much more intuitive and pleasant. But both MaxiFi Standard and MaxiFi Premium do something very important that ESPlanner, ESPlannerPLUS, and ESPlannerPRO don't do. They all maximize household lifetime spending by optimizing over Social Security claiming strategies, retirement account withdraw dates, the decision of when to take Roth and non-Roth retirement money, and the decision of whether to annuitize one's retirement benefits.

Learn more about the relationship of MaxiFi to ESPlanner and the plans for ESPlanner going forward

Does ESPlanner run on a Mac?

ESPlanner does not run natively on a Mac, but can be run in a virtual machine on your Mac. Another option is to use MaxiFi Planner, our online planning tool. Learn more about MaxiFi Planner.

We have tested ESPlanner using these different virtual machines:

Parallels Desktop
Virtual Box
VMWare Fusion
Virtual Box is a free virtual machine, but the others require purchase. Depending on the virtual machine software you use, you may also need to purchase a copy of Microsoft Windows to install on the virtual machine (or migrate an existing license if you have one that you are not using). Once Windows is running on the virtual machine you should be able to install ESPlanner.

Another option is to activate BootCamp and boot your Mac as a Windows machine. At least one ESPlanner customer has used BootCamp and reported success installing and using ESPlanner.

On Linux systems we have tested VMWare's Workstation, installing Windows and ESPlanner successfully. We have not tested any other Linux based virtual machine, but anything that allows you to boot Windows should work.

Economic Security Planning does not offer support for the installation of your virtual machine of choice nor do we offer support for installing Windows on the virtual machine, but once you get to the point of installing and running ESPlanner, we do provide support.

WARNING: BE CAREFUL OF THE OUTPUT DIRECTORY WHEN USING A VIRTUAL MACHINE
Saving files on shared drives with the Mac doesn't work when using the PDF report writer. Save report files and place your database on the virtual machine's file system. You can set the report output directory in Help->Customize.

To check the output directory go to Help->Customize
BAD: \\.psf\Home\Documents\My ESPlanner
GOOD: c:\Documents\My ESPlanner

The above is an example. Your directory may be different, depending on your version of Windows

Can I use ESPlanner on more than one computer?

You may install ESPlanner on any of the computers that you own. You will need to login to this website from the second computer and download the install kit to install it on your second computer.
If you are a financial professional and use ESPlanner with your clients, we ask you to purchase ESPlannerPRO for each of the planners in your company.

We use cookies to deliver the best user experience and improve our site.
Learn more or disable cookies.