Method
How Bearings works.
Bearings is built on one idea: that the retirement transition is not a single problem but nine of them, and that the money question — the one every other tool obsesses over — is only the first. This page explains how the assessment is put together, how the scoring works, and, just as importantly, what it is and isn't.
The nine domains.
The framework divides the transition into nine areas of life. Each is something people leaving work actually have to navigate, and each tends to be either over-served by existing tools (money) or ignored by them entirely (most of the rest).
Income, drawdown, taxes, pensions — the math behind the rest.
Winding down, leaning in, or pivoting entirely.
Bones, brain, energy — and the cost of caring for all three.
Where you'll actually live, and the question behind it.
Partners, children, friends — the ones you'll need and the ones who'll need you.
What you'll do with the hours you've just been given back.
Identity, purpose, the question of what it's all for.
Estate, giving, what you leave behind and who carries it.
If you own a business, the exit deserves a plan.
The assessment.
The assessment is thirty-six questions, surfaced one domain at a time. Most use a five-point scale measuring how settled or unsettled you are on a given question — not whether you've done a task, but whether you've genuinely thought it through and reached some footing.
Some questions are specific to where you live, because retirement in Canada and the United States diverge in real ways — the public pension systems, the health-coverage timelines, the tax mechanics. If you tell us you own a business, four questions on succession are added; if not, they're skipped. The result is an assessment shaped to your situation rather than a generic one.
It takes about fifteen minutes. Every answer saves as you go, so you can stop and return without losing your place.
How scoring works.
Each domain produces a score out of one hundred, with a short, written interpretation — not a grade, but a sentence about where you stand and what it tends to mean. The dashboard deliberately surfaces your weakest domains first, because that's where attention is most useful.
A low score is not a verdict. Almost everyone's first assessment turns up gaps — that's the point of taking it. The score exists to direct your attention, not to rank you, and nothing about it is ever shown to anyone but you.
What this is, and isn't.
We want to be straight with you about the framework's standing. It is a considered synthesis — built from close reading of how the retirement transition actually unfolds, and from judgment about what matters across these nine areas of life. It is careful work, and we stand behind it as a way to take your own measure and find where to begin.
It is not, today, a clinically validated instrument. It hasn't been through formal psychometric testing or peer review. We think the honest thing is to say so plainly rather than dress it in the language of science it hasn't yet earned.
Where we intend to go: grounding future versions more formally in the established research on retirement and aging — the work of bodies like the Canadian Psychological Association and the National Institute on Aging, and the broader transition literature — and refining the questions as real use shows us what they do and don't capture. When the framework earns a stronger claim, we'll make it, and show our work here. Until then, take it for what it is: a thoughtful place to start, not the last word.
Education, not advice.
Bearings publishes general educational content and gives you tools to think with. It does not give personalized financial, legal, tax, or medical advice, and nothing in it should be taken as a recommendation for your specific situation.
When your situation calls for a professional — an advisor, an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor — we'll say so, and we'd rather send you to a good one than pretend to replace them.
Your data.
Your assessment, your scores, your journal, your goals — all of it is yours alone. It's protected at the row level on every record, never sold, never shared, and never turned into something other users can see. Privacy isn't a setting in Bearings; it's the foundation.