What is RetireMint?
But now that I have your attention, let me add that RetireMint (with a capital M, followed by a lower-case letter i rather than an e) is a Canadian retirement platform. And it just might affect how you plan for both the financial and the lifestyle aspects of retirement. There’s not a lot of risk, as you can try it for free at retiremint.ca. In fact, there will be no charge at all for retirement planning users, RetireMint co-founder and CEO Ryan Donovan told me in an email. Nor is there advertising. Instead, revenue comes from its Find a Coach tool: a search tool and online directory of professionals who can assist with users’ planning needs. (They pay a monthly fee to be listed on the platform.)
One thing I liked, once I gave it a spin, is that it isn’t just another retirement app that tells you how much money you need to be able to retire in comfort. It spends as much or more time on the softer aspects of retirement in Canada: what you’re going to do with all that leisure time—travelling, part-time work, keeping your social networks intact and so on.
In that respect, the “beyond financial” aspects of RetireMint remind me of a book I once co-authored with ex-corporate banker Mike Drak, Victory Lap Retirement (Milner, 2019), or indeed my own financial novel, Findependence Day (Trafford, 2013). As I often used to explain, once you have enough money and reach your Financial Independence Day, everything that happens thereafter can be characterized as your “victory lap.”
But it’s not my intention to plug those books here, beyond saying that I immediately understood where RetireMint is coming from. So back to the program. RetireMint’s mission statement is: “Helping Canadians retire better, faster and more prepared.” It also bills itself as “Your guide to the modern retirement.”
What RetireMint does and doesn’t do
Donovan sent me a pdf with some main points for the site, as well as providing access to the software. He also penned a guest blog on my website late in August, FindependenceHub.com, appropriately titling it “Retirement needs a new definition”.
There he explains that “Retirement has become so synonymous with financial planning, and so associated with ‘old age,’ that they’re practically inseparable. Yet, in reality, retirement is a stage of life, not a date on the calendar, an amount in your bank account, and is certainly not a death sentence.”
Donovan doesn’t argue that financial planning is the keystone of retirement preparation, as “you won’t even be able to flirt with the idea of retiring without it.” But the subject is much broader in scope than that. As he puts it, this wider definition must “break free from the tethered association of solely financial planning.”
Who is CEO Ryan Donovan? And does RetireMint offer investing advice?
How did Donovan come by all this retirement expertise? He was never a financial advisor, per se, but he did work as a product manager at a wealth advisory office. So, he worked with the advisors at the firm to design products and communications for retirement planning.