What The Center for Retirement Readiness™ is
The Center for Retirement Readiness™ (referred to throughout this page as "TCFRR") is a community service organization. It is not a financial advisory firm, an investment adviser, a broker-dealer, or an insurance company. It does not provide financial advice, investment recommendations, or insurance products.
TCFRR exists to provide free preparedness resources — the Lifeline Card™ being the first — to families navigating the realities of aging, caregiving, and retirement. Our resources are funded in part by sponsoring financial advisors who choose to support community-service programs in their local areas. Those advisors run their investment advisory businesses through their own firms; their relationship with TCFRR is limited to community-service sponsorship, and is described in detail in Section 3 of this page.
TCFRR is a community service organization that gives families free preparedness tools. Some financial advisors help fund our work because they care about their communities. We are not a financial company, and the advisors who sponsor our work are not running their financial businesses through us.
What the Lifeline Card™ program is
The Lifeline Card™ is a free, fold-once wallet card that carries a person's most important medical and contact information — allergies, medications, conditions, emergency contacts, doctor — in a format usable by first responders, school staff, neighbors, or anyone else who might need it during an emergency.
The program serves three card variants:
- Adult cards, designed for the wallets of pre-retirees, retirees, and adults of any age managing chronic conditions or medications.
- Child cards, designed with privacy-first principles for the backpacks and lunchboxes of children, with sensitive information shielded from casual view.
- Pet cards, designed for the glove boxes and travel carriers of pet owners, prioritizing microchip information and "if found" contact paths.
Cards are filled out on our website, generated as printable PDFs, and printed at home by the user. The cards are free. There are no fees, no upsells, no premium tiers, no subscriptions. Updates to the cards are also free, indefinitely. Users may delete their data at any time.
What "sponsorship" means
Some Lifeline Card™ users will see a sponsoring advisor's name on their card or in TCFRR communications. We want to be transparent about what that relationship is, and what it isn't.
What a sponsoring advisor is
A sponsoring advisor is a financial professional who has chosen to fund the Lifeline Card™ community-service program in their local area. In exchange for that sponsorship, TCFRR identifies the advisor as the local sponsor on cards generated through their community subdomain and in the annual reminder email cardholders receive.
What sponsorship costs the cardholder
Nothing. Cardholders never pay TCFRR or any sponsoring advisor for cards, updates, or any other resource provided through this program. The program is free at every point of use.
What a sponsoring advisor receives
- Their name appears on cards generated through their community sponsorship subdomain.
- Their name is mentioned in the annual reminder emails cardholders receive on the anniversary of their signup.
- A public listing on TCFRR's site identifies them as the sponsoring advisor for their community.
- The contact details of cardholders who sign up through their community — specifically the cardholder's name, email address, and phone number — so the advisor may welcome them to the program and offer retirement-readiness resources at no cost. This is disclosed to the cardholder at signup. It does not include any medical, health, or family information (see below).
What a sponsoring advisor does not receive
- Any medical, health, or family information from the card form — under any circumstances. This includes allergies, conditions, medications, doctors, emergency contacts, and any information about children or other household members.
- The ability to send emails through TCFRR's communication systems.
- Any compensation tied to specific cardholder activity.
Sponsorship is not endorsement.
TCFRR does not endorse, recommend, or refer for the investment advisory services, insurance products, or other financial offerings of any sponsoring advisor. The fact that an advisor sponsors the Lifeline Card™ program in your community is not, and should not be construed as, a recommendation that you engage that advisor for financial services.
If a cardholder is interested in working with a sponsoring advisor for financial planning, investment advice, or any other professional service, that engagement is a separate decision the cardholder should make through their own due diligence — in the same way they would evaluate any other financial professional.
Sponsoring advisors are independently licensed and regulated through their own firms. Their advisory services are governed by their firm's regulatory obligations, not by TCFRR. If a cardholder has questions or concerns about a sponsoring advisor's services, they should be directed to that advisor's firm and the appropriate regulator (FINRA, the SEC, or the cardholder's state securities regulator), not to TCFRR.
Suggested binding language for this section:
"The Center for Retirement Readiness™ is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, or insurance company, and provides no financial, investment, tax, or insurance advice. The appearance of any sponsoring advisor's name in connection with the Lifeline Card™ program does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or referral by TCFRR of the advisor's investment advisory or other professional services. All investment advisory services described or rendered by sponsoring advisors are provided exclusively through their respective firms, and are subject to the regulatory obligations and disclosure requirements of those firms."
Note: this language was drafted by the project team as a starting point. It must be reviewed, edited, and approved by counsel familiar with applicable federal and state securities, advertising, and consumer protection laws before publication.
How we handle your data.
The information you enter when generating a Lifeline Card™ is sensitive. It includes medical information, emergency contacts, and details about minors and pets. We treat that responsibility with corresponding seriousness.
What data we collect
We collect two kinds of information. First, your contact details — your name, email address, and phone number — so we can send you a copy of your generated cards, send one reminder a year on your card's anniversary, and so the local advisor who sponsors your community can welcome you to the program. Second, the card information you choose to enter — names, dates of birth, medical information, emergency contacts, and the other fields needed to create the cards. These two kinds of information are treated very differently, as described below.
How we use it
- To generate your cards and deliver the PDF to your email.
- To send you one annual reminder email so you can update your cards if anything has changed.
- To allow you to log in and update or delete your data at any time.
What we will never do with it
- We will never sell your data. Not to advisors, not to insurance companies, not to anyone.
- We will never share your medical or family information with sponsoring advisors — including allergies, conditions, medications, doctors, emergency contacts, or any information about children or other household members. Sponsoring advisors have no access to any of the card information you enter.
- We will never use your data to target you with marketing for financial products, insurance, or any other commercial offering.
- We will never share your data with third-party advertisers, data brokers, or analytics companies in any form that would identify you personally.
What we do share — and with whom
The Lifeline Card™ is free because a local financial advisor sponsors the program in your community. In return, your contact details — name, email, and phone number — are shared with that sponsoring advisor, who may reach out to welcome you and offer retirement-readiness resources at no cost. This is the only information shared with the advisor, it is disclosed to you at signup, and you can unsubscribe from communications at any time. Your medical and family information is never part of this — it stays between you and your cards.
Where the data lives
Card data is stored on TCFRR's systems, used solely for the purposes described above, and deleted on request. Our full privacy policy, available at thecenterforretirementreadiness.com/privacy, contains additional detail on data security, retention periods, and your rights as a user.
What we never do.
For clarity — because the line between "community service" and "marketing program" is precisely where trust gets broken — here is an explicit list of practices the Lifeline Card™ program will never engage in:
- We never sell, rent, lease, or otherwise transfer your personal information to any third party for any commercial purpose.
- We never share your medical or family information with sponsoring advisors, regardless of the advisor's request or commercial offer. (Your contact details — name, email, and phone — are shared with the advisor who sponsors your community, as disclosed to you at signup and described in Section 5 above.)
- We never charge users for cards, updates, account creation, or any feature of the program.
- We never email you marketing content for financial products or insurance on behalf of sponsoring advisors or any other third party.
- We never include calls-to-action toward an advisor's services on the cards themselves.
- We never make participation in the program contingent on engaging a sponsoring advisor for financial services.
If TCFRR ever changes any of the above commitments, we will notify all current cardholders before the change takes effect, and provide a clear path to opt out, delete data, or withdraw from the program.
The card is not a medical directive.
The Lifeline Card™ is an informational tool. It is not a legally binding medical directive, advance healthcare directive, do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order, or power of attorney.
The card may include a field pointing to where a cardholder's actual medical or end-of-life documents are kept — but the card itself does not legally direct medical treatment, refuse care, or grant decision-making authority to anyone. First responders, hospital staff, and other medical professionals will rely on the card as informational reference, not as a binding directive.
Cardholders who wish to establish legally binding medical directives should consult with an attorney or qualified medical-legal professional in their state. The card is intended to complement, not replace, those documents.
Suggested binding language for this section:
"The Lifeline Card™ is provided for informational purposes only. It is not a medical advance directive, do-not-resuscitate order, healthcare power of attorney, or any other legally binding instrument governing medical treatment. Information contained on the card does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for consultation with qualified medical or legal professionals. Cardholders are solely responsible for the accuracy of the information they enter, and TCFRR makes no warranty regarding the use, interpretation, or reliance on Lifeline Card™ information by emergency responders, medical providers, or any other party."
Note: this language was drafted by the project team as a starting point. It must be reviewed and approved by counsel familiar with state-level medical-directive law (which varies materially across U.S. jurisdictions) before publication. Special attention should be given to state-specific requirements around DNR pointers and HIPAA-adjacent disclosures.
Sponsoring advisor firm disclosures.
Each sponsoring advisor's firm has its own regulatory obligations, disclosure requirements, and standard language describing the advisor's services. Below, each sponsoring advisor's firm-specific disclosure language is published as provided by that firm's compliance department.
This section is updated as new sponsoring advisors join the program. Each block represents one sponsoring advisor and is governed by the disclosure language their firm has approved.
[Advisor Full Name], [Title], [Firm Name]
[City, State]
Firm registration: [RIA / Broker-Dealer / Dual-registered / etc.]
Firm website: [URL]
[Firm-provided disclosure language goes here, verbatim, as approved by the firm's compliance department. TCFRR does not edit or summarize this language.]
For each sponsoring advisor, the firm-specific disclosure language slot above is populated with the verbatim language provided by that firm's compliance department. TCFRR's program team coordinates collection of this language during the advisor onboarding process.
Note for project team: the workflow for collecting firm-specific disclosure language is described in the email package (`compliance` outbound email, ID `advisor.compliance_request`). The language each firm provides is published verbatim and is not edited or summarized by TCFRR. If a firm's language conflicts with TCFRR's structural disclosures, that conflict should be flagged to counsel before the advisor's listing goes live.
How to reach us.
If you have questions about anything on this page, about your card data, about a sponsoring advisor, or about the program in general, you can reach a real person at:
- To delete your data: thecenterforretirementreadiness.com/delete-my-data
- Privacy policy: thecenterforretirementreadiness.com/privacy
We commit to responding to community-team inquiries within one business day, Monday through Friday, Pacific time.
Legal terms and notices.
This section contains the formal legal language governing your use of the Lifeline Card™ program and its related TCFRR services.
This entire section requires attorney drafting. The placeholders below are structural — the actual legal language must be drafted, reviewed, and approved by qualified counsel before publication.
10.1 — Trademarks.
[Attorney to draft: TCFRR™, The Center for Retirement Readiness™, Lifeline Card™, and related marks are trademarks owned by [LEGAL ENTITY NAME]. State current registration status. Address use by sponsoring advisors and unauthorized use by third parties.]
10.2 — Limitation of liability.
[Attorney to draft: standard limitation of liability language addressing TCFRR's role as an informational service provider and disclaiming liability for the accuracy of information entered by users, the use of cards by emergency responders or others, and the actions of sponsoring advisors outside the scope of the program.]
10.3 — Governing law and jurisdiction.
[Attorney to draft: governing law clause, dispute resolution mechanism (mediation/arbitration/litigation), and venue selection. Should account for the program's likely multi-state user base.]
10.4 — Indemnification.
[Attorney to draft: standard indemnification language as appropriate for a free-to-user community service program.]
10.5 — Modifications to this disclosure.
[Attorney to draft: TCFRR's right to modify these disclosures, notice obligations to current cardholders, and the effect of modifications on existing relationships.]
10.6 — State-specific provisions.
[Attorney to draft: any required state-specific consumer-protection, healthcare, or securities-related provisions, particularly for California, New York, Florida, and other states with material consumer-protection regimes that may apply to a multi-state community-service program. Coordinate with privacy policy drafting for CCPA / CPRA touchpoints.]
Note for the project team: the structural skeleton above identifies the categories most legal-effect disclosure pages will require, but the specific provisions depend on TCFRR's legal entity structure, applicable jurisdictions, and the regulatory posture chosen by counsel. The Lifeline Card™ program's structure (free-to-user; not a financial service; multi-state by default; touches medical and minors' data; involves sponsoring advisors regulated by separate firms) creates a distinctive legal profile that warrants attention from counsel familiar with both consumer-protection and securities-marketing law.