I'm told it will be a few weeks yet. So I'm hoping July 1

*Bumping thread* :-)

There's a release now in Beta that we're looking at, so I'd say we'll see it released in two weeks.

Yes, sorry, I was on the road and lost track of your question. The Beta is being tested and I see Darryl has this note with the Beta release notes:

I will be out-of-town starting tomorrow though August 22nd. When I return, I hope to resolve any outstanding issues and release publicly around month end.

So I believe we'll see a public release by the end of August.

Dan, can you comment on the future of ESPlanner versus the Maxfiplanner effort? Is ESPlanner being deprecated? Is there reason to move over to Maxfiplanner at ESPlanner support expiration? (Pardon if this has been talked about already - if so I missed that.)

All of the new development is going into MaxiFi Planner, but there will still be maintenance releases for ESPlanner. We are not yet actively discouraging the use of ESPlanner in favor of MaxiFi but I suspect in a year or so, that day will come. At this point, I'm just letting people who inquire about ESPlanner know about MaxiFi because for many the extra features of ESPlanner are not needed and the web platform is a big advantage. The UI is nice in MaxiFi.

I have my own model over at MaxiFi as well, and I've grown to like it. But right now there is not a way to run multiple profiles (i.e., clone a profile and make a change) although there is a Quick Compare feature that allows some nice side-by-side comparison of a limited set of variables.

Our engineer, Ed, is working every day on MaxiFi and Darryl is addressing some update issues and a few other things in ESPlanner. I'm still waiting on the next ESPlanner release. He has the beta out for me to test so my guess is still a week or two before he releases that.

It's a "yes" on the last question and "on the list of features to add" for all of the others. We hope to have all features of ESPlanner and more added to MaxiFi over the next 18 months.

Keeps getting pushed back James. They are working on some revisions to the Monte Carlo that they ran into some issues with and although there are many things ready to go, they didn't want to release them and then three weeks later do yet another release. Sorry. :(

I'd say another 3 or 4 weeks at the most.

I'll ask.

Since there has not been an update to ESP since February, and many of us have paid the annual license fee since then, has any consideration been given to waiving the initial license fee for MaxiFi if we were to switch to it rather than update ESP? It might be a way to encourage the transition to the new program. If not, I for one would remain with ESP until I have to renew in August. Just a suggestion.

The programmer working on this wrote the following to my query.

Sorry Dan, but I don't have a good answer at this point.

About 4 weeks ago, Larry introduced a new way to calculate future returns in Monte Carlo. That work is done, but we're working through convergence failures related to unpredictable future returns. (The failures are related to the new Monte Carlo approach in general, not the future returns change we just made.) Mike and I are focused on solving this now. I think we're narrowing in on it.

Once that is done, we need to finalize the MC reports and resolve a few remaining general bugs.

At this point, I would not provide a revised estimate. Just say getting this release finished is our top priority. We are working through some issues and will roll it out once we are completely confident in the results. We can update folks (or esplanner.com) when we set a final release date. (Meaning we have only minor testing and no open issues remaining.)

Sorry I don't have a better answer.

I will ask about the update price question, but I think they have done the required updates as far as taxes go, and they are simply trying to get this MC enhancement going.

The programmer working on this wrote the following to my query.

Sorry Dan, but I don't have a good answer at this point.

About 4 weeks ago, Larry introduced a new way to calculate future returns in Monte Carlo. That work is done, but we're working through convergence failures related to unpredictable future returns. (The failures are related to the new Monte Carlo approach in general, not the future returns change we just made.) Mike and I are focused on solving this now. I think we're narrowing in on it.

Once that is done, we need to finalize the MC reports and resolve a few remaining general bugs.

At this point, I would not provide a revised estimate. Just say getting this release finished is our top priority. We are working through some issues and will roll it out once we are completely confident in the results. We can update folks (or esplanner.com) when we set a final release date. (Meaning we have only minor testing and no open issues remaining.)

Sorry I don't have a better answer.

We've made the 20% off MaxiFi discount for existing ESPlanner users good through next October so you can definitely stay with ESPlanner until you need to renew.

At this time we're not considering waiving the fee--we do have the essential inflation and tax updates included.

I will ask. That's a Mike question.

Mike writes:

Dan,
The 2% 2017 COLA, which affects the Jan 2018 Social Security check, will be accounted for after 1 Jan 2018 when we switch from 2017 dollars to 2018 dollars.

Thanks,
Mike

I notice MaxiFi Planner hasn't been updated since February, over six months. Are y'all putting enough resources behind what is supposed to be the successor to ESPlanner? (Not being snarky, but it is curious.)