Why was ThatDay created?

In 2020, I sold my cycle apparel business and faced a couple of questions that turned out to be surprisingly hard to answer: Could I afford to stop working? And what does retirement actually mean?

I tried the usual online retirement calculators and found they didn’t really work for me. They all assumed retirement at 65. Some didn't allow you to include a partner. None could tell me what I actually needed to know.

So, I built my own model. Friends started using it. Some discovered they could retire earlier than they'd expected. In some cases the impact I saw was life-changing — and that was the moment I realised this needed to be available to every New Zealander, for free.

Something else shaped the way I approached things. Running a business that shipped fabric from Europe to China and then shipped finished garments back to Europe made me acutely aware of the environmental cost of consumption. I never felt comfortable with what we were doing and that played a significant part in my decision to sell. When I did, I carried that awareness with me — and it became central to what ThatDay would become.

ThatDay Charitable Trust was launched in 2023, built on a conviction that most people have more control over their retirement than they realise — and that the best path to financial freedom runs through spending more consciously, not just earning more.

Who ThatDay helps

ThatDay is free for all New Zealanders. I built it for anyone who wants to understand their retirement picture clearly — whether they are 30 and just starting to think about it, or 55 and wondering if they've left it too late.

It is particularly useful for people who have found conventional retirement calculators frustrating, limiting, or irrelevant to their circumstances — including those who want to retire before 65, those planning as a couple, and the self-employed, who face a different retirement challenge from employees.

I also built it for people who have never thought of themselves as savers, but who might be surprised by what a small change in spending could produce over time.

Our Impact

ThatDay is at an early stage of its journey, but the impact I’ve seen on people has been consistent with what I first saw when my friends began using my original model: people who see their retirement picture clearly tend to act differently. They save more deliberately. They spend more consciously. Some discover that retirement is closer than they thought.

My broader goal is a shift in how New Zealanders think about money — away from the assumption that more income is always the answer, and toward a clearer understanding of what "enough" actually looks like for them personally.

That shift, multiplied across thousands of New Zealanders, is what ThatDay is working toward.

Paul Mason, Founder/Trustee — ThatDay Charitable Trust