k25x vs ProjectionLab

If you hold money in more than one currency, this is the line that matters: ProjectionLab can't consolidate it. Its forecasting is genuinely excellent, but it runs in a single currency. The 'Today's vs Actual Currency' toggle people sometimes mistake for multi-currency is inflation-adjusted (real) vs nominal dollars within one currency — not USD-to-AED-to-GBP conversion. True multi-currency consolidation has sat as a 'Planned' item on their public changemap since November 2021 (139 votes, no ship date as of mid-2025), and expats are the cohort asking for it. k25x's entire reason to exist is the opposite: hold each account in its native currency and roll everything into one base-currency net worth, so a UAE expat with an AED salary, a UK pension, and a USD brokerage sees a single honest number.

Be clear about what ProjectionLab is, because it's very good at it: a long-horizon projection and simulation tool. Monte Carlo with up to ~10,000 runs, Sankey cash-flow diagrams, unlimited what-if scenario branching with a Compare mode, historical backtesting to 1871, and deep tax optimization — Roth conversions, ACA subsidies, capital-gains harvesting. The UI is widely (and fairly) called stunning, and there's a real advisor/client tier for professionals. If your need is 'model my retirement 30 years out in exhaustive detail,' it is best-in-class and more mature than a young product's engine. We're not pretending to out-simulate it head-on.

But ProjectionLab is not a net-worth tracker or a budgeting tool — reviewers consistently note it 'lacks budgeting and expense tracking.' It's a forward projection you revisit periodically, not a daily companion. k25x fills exactly that unoccupied role: track every account today, see consolidated net worth across currencies, run budgets, and check drift — then layer FIRE scenarios on top. One is the periodic planning session; the other is the thing you open every week. Note one honest overlap: both are privacy-minded. ProjectionLab's 100% manual entry / no-aggregation stance is deliberate, and k25x is local-first by default — so privacy isn't a clean differentiator between us. The currency and expat angles are.

The expat gap is the clincher for this audience. ProjectionLab's tax logic is built around US rules (it covers 6+ countries but is functionally US/FIRE-centric), and it has zero GCC tooling: no end-of-service gratuity (EOSB) calculator, no day-183 tax-residency watch, no UK-returner / leaving-UAE journeys, no Zakat calculator, and no Sharia-compliant portfolio mode. k25x ships all of those, plus a Boglehead 3-fund score and an installable mobile PWA against ProjectionLab's web-only product. The honest takeaway: if you're a US-based FIRE planner who wants the deepest simulator, ProjectionLab is the better tool. If your wealth spans currencies and your life spans the GCC, k25x is the one that actually reflects your situation. Boglehead and ETF content in k25x is educational and informational-only — never personalized buy/sell advice.