You’ve worked hard your entire life. You’ve dutifully paid your healthcare plan premiums and your payroll taxes that fund the giant blob known as Medicare. You’re 64 and looking forward to cashing in on all those years spent working and contributing. You assume once you blow out that 65th candle, your benefits you have spent the last 40 years working and paying toward will just kick in and Mama Medicare will take care of all your health and wellbeing needs. Sadly, it’s not even close to being that easy.

To say that signing up for Medicare is an antiquated process would be a massive understatement. Understanding your options, keeping track of key dates, selecting the right products and avoiding penalties is even worse. The tools available for retirees tend to focus on paper based brochures you can download from the Medicare site or pick up in person at your local Social Security office. If you can figure out exactly what you need and are somewhat internet savvy, you can sign up for basic Medicare coverage online, but this still leaves gaps in your care and exposes you to high cost events.

Photo by Nick Fewings / Unsplash

The team at RETIRETY decided to spend some time trying to navigate the online tools available for retirees. In our experience, a vast majority of the online tools available focused on routing the user to a live agent. There is not necessarily anything wrong with working through an agent to consider and shop for options, but the agents are receiving their compensation from the plans that they distributed and as such, are not incentivized to consider your best interest. They are also salespeople and are typically there long enough to sell you a product after which they disappear.

We felt there had to be a better way to support the growing population of retirees who are navigating the Medicare and Social Security arenas. So we built it! Our Medicare Navigator is the only impartial online tool available that provides basic guidance on plan selection based on your response to around 5 questions.

Furthermore, missing key Medicare deadlines care be disastrous, so we built a Medicare Alerts tool. It is the only one that keeps you consistently apprised of important dates customized for you and your needs.

We are adding new features every day and wake up every morning excited to hear about your feedback and experiences. Give our tools a shot and let us know what you think!