About RetirePlan

I didn't start as an investor. I started as someone who trusted the bank.

A couple of mutual funds, maybe a GIC - whatever the branch person suggested. It felt responsible. It wasn't nothing. But I wasn't really in control, and I didn't understand enough to know what I was missing.

A bad experience with a large investment firm changed that. When your interests and your advisor's interests aren't aligned, it shows eventually. I walked away paying more attention.

I started doing the things I was supposed to do - joined the corporate share purchase plan, maximized the RRSP match my employer offered. Good moves. But my money at the bank was still grinding along in mutual funds with quiet, persistent fees and underwhelming growth.

Then I discovered TFSAs. Then I discovered low-fee brokers. And slowly, piece by piece, I started to actually understand the difference between a TFSA and an RRSP - not just what they were, but how the order and timing of contributions and withdrawals could change my retirement outcome by thousands of dollars. I moved my RRSP to something better.

I built a spreadsheet.

A column per holding, months down the side. Historical balances on one side, projected growth and monthly deposits on the other. It was imperfect - flat growth rates, no inflation modelling, no tax layer - but it was mine. And it let me ask the question I'd been avoiding: "Will we actually make it?"

That question unlocked everything else.

I found my personal CPP estimate on the government website. I read about OAS clawback - the mechanism that quietly reduces your OAS if your retirement income crosses a threshold most people don't realize exists until it's too late. I tried to model CPP timing. I tried to figure out what happened if I moved a stock position into an ETF. The spreadsheet started collapsing under the weight of it all.

I'm a developer. By that point, AI was useful for coding help. It helped write the software, but it doesn't run the product.

I asked a simple question: "Can you help me write a program to replace this spreadsheet - and do all the things the spreadsheet couldn't?"

Several iterations later, I had something real. And based on what it showed me, I actually went and verified - and then restructured - our portfolio. Not because the tool told me what to buy. Because the tool showed me what our picture looked like, and I could finally see clearly enough to act.

Then I started wondering how many other Canadians were sitting on a spreadsheet just like mine, trying to answer the same question.

Feature creep arrived, as it always does for developers. CPP timing scenarios. OAS clawback modelling. RRSP-to-TFSA withdrawal ratios. Spousal income. Scenario comparison. What if I retire two years early? What if we delay CPP to 70?

I'll be honest about what it is and what it isn't.

It's not a robo-advisor. It doesn't suggest stocks or predict market cycles. It works with whatever holdings and assumptions you bring to it - and if you don't trust the growth rate, you can change it. It uses flat rates: flat inflation, flat contribution room increases, flat CPP and OAS growth. It doesn't model promotions, layoffs, or inheritances. It is, in the most accurate description I can give, a super-glorified spreadsheet with many competing rules and the ability to shuffle things around and see what happens across 30 years.

Why is it priced so low? Honestly, because the work is already done. Running a website isn't expensive. And even if this never becomes a meaningful business, I've already gotten full value from it - in the clarity it brought to my own retirement picture, and in the decisions it helped me make.

If it can do the same for even a fraction of the Canadians who are right now staring at a spreadsheet and hoping the math works out - that's worth doing.