The situation
A teacher’s retirement conversation stalls on one number nobody has. CalSTRS pays a percentage of final salary based on age, service years and which formula the teacher landed under, and almost no teacher can tell you what that comes to, let alone whether it covers the life they were planning.
Agents were explaining that with a legal pad. The explanation is convincing when it lands, but it takes the whole meeting to get there, and it cannot be handed to anyone afterward.
What we built
A calculator built for the meeting, not for a marketing page.
- Three steps, stated up front, with a promise the tool can keep: under two minutes
- The CalSTRS formula question asked the way a teacher can answer it, 2 percent at 60 or 2 percent at 62, each labeled by the hire date that decides it rather than by the formula name
- A nudge to check the annual statement or ask HR, because a wrong plan type produces a confident wrong answer
- Service credit entered with decimals allowed, since partial years are normal and rounding them changes the result
- The output framed as the gap between the pension and the teacher’s own goal, which is the number that actually starts a conversation
- Shipped as an iOS app and as an installable progressive web app, so an agent can hand a teacher a link or a teacher can install it themselves
- Works offline once installed, which matters in a school building
What it does now
An agent opens it across a table, gets to the gap in the first few minutes, and spends the rest of the meeting on what to do about it. The teacher keeps the tool.