Cairn
A retirement plan you can read.
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The problem
Every retirement tool is built for someone else.
Bank dashboards
Built to upsell you to advisors. Your data is the product.
FIRE spreadsheets
Powerful, but you spend Saturday afternoons learning them.
Advisor tools
$400/hr means you visit annually and forget the rest.
The middle is empty. People who want a real plan, on their own time, without becoming a spreadsheet jockey.
Cairn
A retirement plan
that explains itself.
Real tax-aware projections. Plain-English insights. Sliders you drag and a chart that re-animates while you watch. Click any number to see exactly how it was computed.
What's different
Three things competitors don't do.
01
AI Insights, on the dashboard.
Plain-English read on where you stand. 'Your plan runs out at 87 because your withdrawal rate is 1.2% over safe. Delaying SS to 70 adds 6 years.' The kind of analysis a $400/hr advisor would do — instant, on every login.
02
Live what-if sliders.
Drag retirement age 62↔70. The projection chart re-animates in real time. Boldin makes you save scenarios and compare them. We show the answer as fast as you can ask the question.
03
Show the math.
Click any number on the dashboard. A drilldown opens with the exact formula and the inputs. Every figure is auditable. No black box.
The moat
Two things that aren't a feature war.
Tax math, withdrawal modeling, scenario planning — those are at parity with Boldin and ProjectionLab. Where Cairn pulls away:
AI as the front door
No competitor does this. The user's first impression every login is a personalized read on their plan, ranked by impact.
Editorial design
Every other tool looks like 1998 financial software. Cairn reads like a magazine. People stay longer in software they enjoy looking at.
The math
Realistic, not aspirational.
100K-500K
US retirement-tool buyers
Realistic TAM. Boldin has ~50K paying users; ProjectionLab ~10K.
1-5K
Year-1 paying target
$60-300K ARR — a real indie SaaS.
4,300
Salary replacement
$14K/mo at $39/yr × 4,300 active subs. 18-24 month horizon.
Status
Built. Not yet shipped.
- ✓Foundation: schema versioning, IndexedDB durability, Firestore isolation, golden-test suite for tax + withdrawal math (213/213).
- ✓Magic moments: 5-min onboarding, AI Insights, live sliders, Monte Carlo bands, “show the math” everywhere.
- ✓Imports: AI-assisted CSV mapping for any vendor, batch transaction categorizer, undo within 30 days.
- ✓Productization: Stripe + Square billing both wired, paywall component, account deletion, ToS / Privacy / Refund pages, support widget.
- ✓Marketing: SEO calculators (when-can-I-retire, Roth conversion), blog skeleton, OG cards.
- ○Pending public launch: domain + landing page polish + paywall flip + advisor marketplace UI.
Cairns mark the path.
So should your plan.
Built so you don't guess your way to retirement.
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