What's the nature of your FEA work? If it's just educational or simple stuff for fun then I wouldn't worry too much about which platform/cpu you go with Z97 and a 4690k or 4790k will work out great. If your looking at doing huge complicated models and it's time critical work that pays well then maybe look to X99 and Xeons however i'm struggling to imagine any 'domestic/personal' scenario where that's appropriate.
I've done some simple FEA on my quad i7 and it just munches through them in seconds, if I had something mental to do i'd just leave it overnight. CFD on the other hand is some serious stuff, I can see why you might want to go to a higher platform for that but again it all depends on your usage/circumstances.
The Maximus VII Gene is great btw
JR