Looking to retire with a significant age gap in your marriage? Wondering how to plan for retirement when the age difference is 10-20 years between partners? Curious about the financial and lifestyle considerations involved?
🔍 #marriedcouples #retirementplanning #agegap #financialplanning
Key Considerations for Couples with Large Age Gaps
Here are some important factors to keep in mind when planning for retirement with a significant age difference:
1. Retirement Age Differential
2. Life Expectancy
3. Social Security Benefits
4. Health Care Costs
By addressing these key considerations and seeking professional advice, couples with large age gaps can create a retirement plan that suits their unique situation and ensures a secure financial future. How are you preparing for retirement with a significant age gap in your marriage? Let’s discuss! #retirementplanning #financialadvice #agegapcouples
My in-laws were like this. Merged finances from the start. One stopped working a couple years before the other. Plan together to succeed together. Married couples keeping the finances separate are doing it wrong, IMHO.
My spouse is 61. I’m 46. We own our small business and are taking steps where we can semiretire by more investing in projects with partners instead of labor intensive work. Since my job is just handling the finances and any office work or design input, I will get to semiretire with him. We are trying to get a rhythm of 2 or 3 projects a year with travel or working on our hone in between. Our house is paid off and no debt and we can run the company as long as one of us is cognitive.
My husband and I are 9.5 years apart. We both make 6 figures and live in lcol to mcol city. Plan is for him to retire at 55 and either I retire with him at that time or less than 5 years after. We are on track to both retire when he is 55 if not earlier
My parents are 10 years apart and also got married later in life. Everything was fully combined and shared as our money not his or her’s money. My parents retired generally at the same time as each other and unexpectedly early due to health circumstances.
Your post presumes the couple doesn’t think of each other as a team making joint decisions together or fully sharing finances. Not everyone’s relationships are tit for tat.
I’m an age gap couple, 10 years. We don’t have a plan plan. Plan is to just try and retire eventually. lol. But it did make me think about Roth v. Traditional since we may be still in a hire tax bracket if he retires first and I still have my job
I’ve always been planning to FIRE anyway. My partner is old enough to retire. We are going to retire together, or I might even retire before him (he’s planning to retire beginning of next year. I’m debating working the same time, or just going ahead and retiring after my medical leave coming up this summer).
But there are lots of situations where one spouse retires and another doesn’t, even without an age gap. It really depends on the individuals. There are some people who just prefer to be working, and on the other side, there are some people who prefer to have alone time to do their own thing when their spouse isn’t around. It’s all about communication and compromise, like everything in a relationship.
Late retirement for higher earning, older spouse. Early retirement for younger. Older delays Social Security until 70 and younger takes it at 62 and when old geezer croaks she gets his higher benefit.
Don’t have to both retire the same year.
Medical insurance is the biggest problem for early retirement.
My wife is 8 years younger than I am, so almost. We married late and she’s a SAH wife. The main thing we / I did was delay the start of my social security to age 70. That way I get the maximum benefit and that will go to her. Aside from that, we’re well enough off that she won’t have to worry about money if she’s reasonable. So I’m trying to teach her some basic investing.
My dad and step mom are about 10ish years apart. She has retired for the 3rd time and I won’t call it a done deal until she stays out of work for a year. He has another 5-9 years to reach a decent pension. They seem to be happy. They take a few vacations a year and the larger issue is step-mom going stir crazy. I think after she finds the right volunteer group/social circle it will be better.
My wife is 14 years younger. Most likely we will retire together when I am 70. Fortunately, we are on track savings wise to make this happen. I would hate for my wife to have to keep working for 10+ years after I retire.
My parents are 16 years apart. They both worked jobs that had retirement, so both were adequately covered when each was ready to retire. My dad is older and he worked a part time job as a tax preparer a few months out of the year for about 10 years after his initial retirement.
My husband will retire on time. I will retire 10 years early. It’s fair because it’s my income/savings before marriage that got us there. Plus he loves his job while I merely tolerate mine.
We’re working through this now. My husband is 12 year older than me, and we are planning to retire in ~2 years when he’s 58. We love to travel, and plan to spend retirement traveling/living in lower cost countries (at least until social security kicks in). If we change our minds, I’ll go back to work.
My husband and I are just shy of 9 years apart – we realized early on that this would be an issue for us: we knew we’d want to retire fairly close together. Luckily, we’ve always been very aligned in what we wanted our lives to look like: we wanted financial security, not wealth… we wanted to live with a modest footprint possession-wise, we needed to live coastally (husband surfs) and where our now adult children would have lots of education and work options. We worked early with a financial planner – and followed their advice: we bought in an inexpensive (for SoCal, north most part of San Diego) beach town within 15 minutes of the water, stayed in the same house, kept our debt load very low (just house and one car note, paid cash for everything else), and avoided unnecessary shiny objects. When the kids were little I waitressed at night so I could be home during the day – we avoided bleeding significant cash on childcare. I moved to a full time corporate job when they were teens and immediately maxed out my 401k contributions (hubby had always been maxing his contributions). We lived decently but frugally- and listened to our financial planner, who helped us navigate the ups and downs of economy (bucket strategy, basically). My husband retired at 62 (telecom) and then consulted for two years, I retired 3ish years after that 56. I would have liked to have worked another 5… but I didn’t want miss out on time with my husband; he’s survived cancer – and experiencing that as a couple teaches you that time is fleeting. Bottom line – get professional help on the front end of your professional journey, plan early and realistically, avoid shiny object spending and always put relationships first. You don’t need a vacation home (nice if you can afford it!) but you do need security … and precious time with your partner.
My dad was older. He worked til 70 because he was very fit and healthy and sharp and what would he do all day while mom was still working? So finally at 70 he was pushed out.
Mom didn’t want to retire. She loved her work as a hospital manager and made a lot of money and she loved shopping and luxury. Dad really wanted her to retire because he wanted to travel.
So she got lucky and the hospital was doing some layoffs and pushing out the older people and she got a generous pension. So she retired early. And Dad retired late.
They sold their big house and moved to a lakefront condo with a boat and did the snow bird seasonal thing between new York and Florida for quite a few years.
Dad had hobbies but mom didn’t so she got bored and took a little part time gig in healthcare.
At some point they became too old and sick to go back and forth and instead just stayed in one place-down the road from me.
They both had pensions and also retirement savings accounts and capital from the sale of the big house. So they had fun in retirement.
Dad passed away first in his 90s. Mom lived for several years on her own and she passed away younger than she should have. I blame Covid. Not because she got sick but because it isolated her and she got depressed and gave up.
One thing to consider is health. Usually, men die before women, so in the case of my inlaws my FIL will likely die before my MIL, on top of being 15 years older AND in worse health. That leaves a potentially much longer time for MIL to be working and/or retired and using up funds.
They didn’t save a whole lot and instead blew a lot of it along the way. I’m not very happy with this because it means WE have to plan in anticipation that as soon as FIL died and MIL can’t live alone/needs to retire and sell the house, she will not be able to afford to live anywhere except with us. There’s no other family that will make that work – they already can’t afford housing and don’t have stability.
So this is a good reminder for anyone in this type of situation that whomever is the younger or healthier partner MUST have enough to live independently OR be able to enter assisted living OR have a backup family plan.
OR plan on remarrying again. This is apparently a very common thing to make sure it doesn’t get too expensive and I can absolutely see why because shit is EXPENSIVE once you need even the slightest increase in medical expenses.
I am 22 years younger than my husband. We got married when he was 55. He was able to retire 3 months later because I had a job that provided health insurance. He started his pension. His house was paid for before we got married.
10 years later he is as busy as ever working on small engine stuff and selling it. I think he is busier now than when he worked, but it’s something he enjoys on his schedule, so it works well.
I still work full time and travel away from home for about 1-2 weeks a month. I really enjoy my job and don’t plan to stop working anytime soon.
We kept finances mostly separate. We both put money into a joint account for bills and groceries. We both have our own checking accounts. I have a variety of investment accounts and max those out. I am saving for retirement and only counting on myself for that. My husband wants his to go to his children, which I completely understand. We set all of that up before marrying. We met with a lawyer and worked it out and made it official.
This way works well for us. There is no resentment. Money is a non issue because we are both savers and planned well. He spends his money however he wants and I don’t question it. The same goes for me. I think I would have resentment if he told me what to do financially.
The key was discussing all of this before marrying and getting beneficiaries on everything we could the way we both wanted. I am glad we did this up front before actually getting married. I think that is why it works.
I’m 10 years younger than my husband and the primary bread winner. I’m aiming to retire at 55/when he is 65 because I don’t want to retire when he is 75. Means a higher savings percentage is needed. Life is throwing us some curveball at the moment, so not sure if I’ll succeed with the plan, but doing the best I can.
My parents are 22 years apart, married at 34 (mom) & 56 (dad)- they had two kids right away (me and a sibling) Dad retired early 60s and collected a pension and social security for having minor dependents (or something like this?) and was a SAHP, which was really nice honestly for us kids. We also made a major move across the country for mom’s career when he was early 60s so dad was apparently having trouble getting hired anywhere anyway, this was part of the decision to retire. Thankfully my mom’s career went well and could support everyone and my dad has been healthy to care for young kids! Mom was always exhausted and stressed I think being the bread winner though, I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with only one income unless that income was super high and super stable after seeing that pressure. Also if something happened to mom or my parents split dad would be in trouble financially, his pension and ss isn’t a lot and he relies a lot on my moms income and healthcare as the working partner.
I work with people in this situation weekly. Heavy emphasis on what I call ‘Survivorship Planning’. Heavy emphasis on creating lifetime income that will not run out and long term care planning. I have seen portfolios of 2-3million devastated by healthcare expenses of the older spouse. Few believe this.
More than 25-year gap here (you read that right!). Hubs retired early at 62, took SS and was thrilled to learn that we would get additional SS for each of our two kids (then 1&3) till they turned 18. Huge windfall! Meanwhile, he became the main at-home parent and I went back to work. When kids were older and in school, he picked up some consulting to supplement draws from his retirement accts. In the years while income was modest, we gradually converted all his retirement accts to Roth IRA, from which we draw monthly. Now, my income is higher and I have built my own retirement accts for later (I’m still working). This is supplemented by some $ I inherited from my parents. He had a health crisis last year that enabled us to initiate cash rider benefit under his long term care insurance, providing additional tax-free income and allowing us to reduce the draw on his investments. It’s complicated, but all in all has worked out well as we were both able to pursue meaningful careers and be super involved with our kids. Careers were not in conflict. When I was earning less early on, his higher income supported us, and then that equation sorta flipped. Plenty of $ for his later years now and likely for my eventual widowhood as well. We’ve been fortunate to have excellent financial advice over the years to help with planning.
It’s been a bit of a moving target. My husband and I have an 11 year age gap (I am older at 39). When we started retirement planning, we wanted to retire together, so our goal was 44/55. The older we get, though , the more we both realized we probably didn’t want to actually fully stop working. Both of us like our jobs and make good money at it, we just realized what we probably really wanted was the _option_ to retire or work a passion job sooner without fear of money issues. The goal has shifted to be closer to a literal 50/50 as my husband does not see himself being able to fully retire anyway, and I think I would easily fill my time!
We aren’t exactly staring retirement in the face just yet so I expect it to continue to shift some more. We are absurdly fortunate to be able to consider early retirement/etc for both of us at all, and not taking that for granted.
My SO and I are 20 years apart. Been together 10 years. Older one retired early (unplanned) from burnout. Younger is working full time and has a couple decades of working left before traditional retirement. While we had/have no definite plan we both value frugality. So we saved as much as we could. On paper it seems like the younger one can retire super early – we’ll hit our FI number in 3 years. But the last few years have been sobering in terms of out-of-our-control macro events and layoffs are looming. So we’re trying to play it by ear. In the meantime I lurk on early retirement subs to see what strategies others are using.
My dad and stepmom had approximately a 15 year age gap. She had been a SAHM for a long time before her divorce and was working toward a degree and had a job as an admin when they met. He was in his 50s and she was in her 40s and both had adult children, which made it easier.
She “retired” when he did but continued to do a lot of volunteer work (30+ hrs/week) in the field in which she got her degree. I think it did make her a little sad that she never really had a full blown career in that field, but truthfully it’s a passion field and doesn’t pay that well, so volunteering rather than working mostly meant that she sacrificed leadership/management opportunities rather than money. They combined day to day finances but not all. My dad actually left money in his will for her to open her own business but I think she feels like the window is closing since she’s now approaching “normal” retirement age. (He had a long illness and she took amazingly devoted care of him for the last few years before he died). He left her enough money that she should be comfortable for the rest of her life. She is now doing child care for a grandchild and has gotten really into a couple of creative hobbies.
I think, very carefully, but with an eye toward flexibility, and not making too many assumptions. My parents made a huge goof in this regard. Dad was in great health, never smoked, ate handfuls of vitamins, jogged, ate well, etc. But he was 10 years older. Mom on the other hand was younger but smoked for a while, got sick often, required multiple surgeries etc. Dad cynically assumed either she would pass first, or they’d go at roughly the same time. So together they decided to not pay for spousal survivor benefits with his pension.
To everyone’s surprise, especially him since he thought he’d live to 100, he developed a fast progressing neurological disease in his early 80s, required long term care fir several years and passed at 88. Mom then had to survive for another 8 years with no pension, ultimately passing at the same age he did. The moral is that life is a box of chocolates. Eat some, but not all, or you get diabetes.