Retirement planning is complicated. It requires you to think carefully about not just finances, but health, housing and lifestyle too.
Wealth management and financial planning institutions have advisors to help folks navigate the ins and outs of all this, but Ian Yamey says these services are often reserved for the wealthy, leaving millions of retirees behind.
“There’s this huge and very needy population of Americans that are just not getting any support other than maybe some DIY research on the internet,” Yamey told Built In.
To help, he, former retirement advisor Tyler End and Brian Ramirez, the former CEO of a wealth management company, founded Retirable. The startup aims to simplify, personalize and democratize the retirement planning process. With $4.7 million of seed funding in its pocket, the company has officially launched its platform.
The round was led by Vestigo Ventures, with participation from Diagram Ventures, Primetime Partners and several angel investors. This public launch follows an initial beta phase in which Retirable was able to help more than 50,000 pre-retirees make their own financial roadmap.
For a flat $99 a year, the platform offers users a path to retirement in understandable, bite-size steps, providing round-the-clock chat-based communication with its team of certified financial planners along the way. In the end, Yamey says Retirable can help customers achieve goals like a bigger retirement paycheck and a better health safety net.
The aim is to provide customers with a comprehensive and accessible retirement plan regardless of their financial situation, which has become increasingly important as more Baby Boomers — one of the largest generations in the country — enter retirement.
“There’s 10,000 Boomers retiring every day,” Yamey said. “And the thing we’ve learned in 2020, sadly, is that COVID has pushed so many more people into early retirement or retirements that no longer look like what they thought. So it’s just exacerbated problems, and there’s even more of a need.”
Yamey also says this industry has been ripe for innovation for a while. There are tons of fintechs that help Millennials and other younger generations more easily manage their finances, but not so much for the older generations.
“Most people get some sort of help filing their taxes every year, but almost nobody is getting helped with the decision around electing for Social Security,” Yamey said. “Our focus is this mass market of pre-retirees that haven’t had any help and have urgent questions that they need help with right now.... There’s just so much green space for making a huge impact on this group of people.”
Looking ahead, Yamey says Retirable is focused on expanding its reach. This seed round will allow the company to hire more financial planners, expand its product offerings and invest in future partnerships.
