NewRetirement models healthcare, taxes, inflation, and Social Security together – not in isolation. $32.6M raised to replace the spreadsheet retirement plan.
ENTRY ANGLES
Simple retirement planning tool showing single metric (distance to livable retirement) · Financial planning service positioned for mass market (99%) rather than wealthy segment · Distribution targeting people before retirement crisis hits
VERTICALS
CAPABILITIES
Simplicity in product design and messaging, Mass market distribution channels, Long-term user engagement mechanics
NewRetirement wants to help people "take their financial future into their own hands" – by building a real plan for it.
The name itself signals the goal: accumulating enough wealth to live comfortably after leaving the workforce. What sets NewRetirement apart from most personal finance apps – which focus either on monthly budgeting or on investment returns in isolation – is that it models the full picture: healthcare costs, Social Security and Medicare, taxes, inflation, and every other variable that shapes long-term financial outcomes.
Setup involves connecting all relevant accounts: bank accounts, property data, liabilities, healthcare expenses, and other income sources.
After that, you can largely get on with your life. The platform monitors your financial situation in the background and surfaces periodic recommendations – rebalance holdings inside your retirement account, make slightly higher mortgage payments to reduce total interest, and so on.
The most compelling feature is one-click scenario modeling. Users can run "what if" simulations on demand – sell the house and move to a different state, or stay put: how does each path affect net worth and tax exposure?
The same simulation engine powers the ongoing recommendations. The platform continuously runs scenarios across equity markets, real estate, and other financial variables – then surfaces specific actions to take now in order to remain solvent in downside cases or gain maximum advantage in upside ones.
At all times, the platform shows users where they stand on the path toward their target financial independence level – and whether they need to take corrective action to stay on track.
NewRetirement isn't just a planning tool. It's an ecosystem: financial literacy content, regular webinars, one-on-one coaching, live chat support, a peer community, and access to certified financial planners (CFPs). The latter typically run around $1,500/year depending on complexity.
The core app is free in calculator mode; the full planning suite costs $120/year.
Separate from the consumer product, the company is actively pursuing a B2B2C model – selling access to employers (as an employee benefit), financial advisors (as a client tool), and banks and financial institutions (as a white-labeled feature). These partners can apply their own branding, making the service appear to be their own product. B2B partners currently account for 70% of revenue.
The platform has around 70,000 active users – 20,000 direct consumers and the remainder through partner organizations. NewRetirement just raised $20.8M, bringing total funding to $32.6M.
NewRetirement focuses on retirement – and its name makes that explicit. The reason? Retirement finance is quietly approaching a crisis.
The problem is actuarial: life expectancy has risen sharply, but pension systems were designed for a world where retirees lived five to ten years after leaving work. Now they're living two or three times that, and the math no longer works.
In the US, 28.4 people of retirement age existed per 100 residents in 2020 – by 2050, that number rises to 40.4. In Spain: 32.8 now, 78.4 in 2050. In China: 18.5 now, 47.5 by mid-century. The pattern repeats across virtually every developed country.
The startup's call to "take your retirement into your own hands" isn't aspiration – it's increasingly a necessity.
Meanwhile, 80% of assets in the US are held by people born between 1946 and 1964 – the generation for whom retirement isn't a distant abstraction but an immediate reality.
Despite this, 65% of Americans have no formal financial plan. Yet 40% say they've "thought about" creating one – which is actually a promising signal. These aren't people who need to be convinced from scratch; they just need a nudge.
The most common reason cited for not having a plan: "I don't have enough money to bother with planning." The irony, of course, is that people with limited money need a plan the most – those with abundant resources can absorb mistakes that would sink everyone else.
Other frequent objections: "it's too complicated," "I don't have time," "financial advisors are too expensive." And the most candid one: "nothing has happened in my life yet that's made me sit down and do this." By the time something does happen, it may be too late.
Financial planning startups are gaining traction – and most of them eventually shift toward B2B2C, finding it more scalable than chasing individual users. LearnLux, [covered here](/review/za-jeto-kompanii-tozhe-platjat) in fall 2022, raised another $7.1M earlier this year, bringing its total to $24.2M. Origin, [covered previously](/review/sotrudnik-s-finansovymi-problemami-hrenovyj-rabotnik) in fall 2021, has raised $72M.
Some financial wellness services position themselves as clubs for the few who've already figured it out – framing financial independence as something only the top 1% can achieve, like the India-based The 1% Club ([covered here](/review/4-vazhnyh-detali-pereupakovki)), which raised $1.2M on that premise.
But the real money is in making financial planning a habit for the other 99%. That's the audience – and that's where positioning and growth efforts should be focused.
The path to cracking that audience probably starts with a specific, concrete goal rather than the fog of "financial wellness." And the goal has to be visceral enough to create lasting engagement. Retirement savings is a strong candidate: it's urgent for the majority of the population and long-horizon enough to keep users engaged for decades.
NewRetirement has already encoded that goal in its name. The challenge is carrying that clarity through to the actual product experience – most of its website copy dissolves into generic financial planning language before making the point land. Simplicity and repetition both matter here.
The broader opportunity is a financial planning service so well-packaged and so accessible that it can reach an audience of billions. The pension crisis is real, it's global, and it's accelerating.
The answer will require dead-simple tools – a single number on a single screen showing how far someone is from a livable retirement – and distribution channels that reach people before a crisis forces them to act: employers, healthcare providers, tax preparers.