I’m 68. I’ve spent a lot of years around restaurants, and I know what it feels like when the finish line is close enough to taste but still somehow… not real yet. You know the date. You’ve done the math. And then Monday shows up again.
So I built a small free tool for people in that stretch — roughly 55 to 70, same folks I write for here. It’s called Almost There.
Try it: Almost There
The feeling I’m trying to bottle
I don’t need another spreadsheet. I need something I glance at that says: *you’re on your way, and here’s what you’re walking toward.*
Here’s what it does:
- You set your retirement date.
- You see the days left.
- You see a progress bar filling up — a visual journey, not a lonely number on a sticky note.
- Along the way: milestones with your own photos. The boat. The trip. The porch you keep talking about. Not a to-do list. More like a timeline of dreams.
When someone asks what you’re working toward, you click a milestone and show them. Big picture. Plain label. No speech required.
And when the date finally comes? It doesn’t die. It flips into a light “Fun After” tracker — same habit, new chapter. Trips, hobbies, the good stuff you put off.
That’s the heart of it. If it were only a bare countdown, I wouldn’t have bothered. There are already plenty of those.
Not another bare numbers app
I’m not promising “AI will transform your golden years.” I use tools like Grok, Copilot, Gemini, and Claude when they help me think and build — same as I write about on this site. Almost There isn’t a chatbot. It’s a daily object with a human job: make the finish line feel real.
Your photos stay on your device. Nothing gets uploaded to my server. Not financial advice. Just a clear screen with big type.
Free now — maybe five bucks later
Right now the page is free. Set the date. Use the milestones. Put your photos on them. Use Fun After when you get there.
Later I may add a simple about $5 one-time unlock for extras, and maybe a small monthly or yearly option for sync across devices. Not today. I’m not waving a timeshare price chart. I wanted something real on the site first.
Try it, then tell me the truth
Open Almost There on your phone or computer.
If you leave a comment, tell me:
- Roughly when you’re hoping to retire (year is fine), and
- One photo you’d put on the journey (boat, trip, garden, “open the place I always talked about” — whatever is true for you).
That second answer matters more than any feature vote.
Next to Table Card
You may have seen Table Card — a small helper for restaurant menus. Almost There is a different animal: personal, quieter, aimed at the years before (and after) you hang it up.
Same shop. Same plain English. Different job.
Desktop widget can wait. I’d rather ship something small and true than a pile of features that don’t feel like anything.
If you’ve got blunt feedback — “I’d use that” or “I already have a calendar, Andrew” — I want that too. Critical is useful. Hype isn’t.
Thanks for reading.
— Andrew
