Get the conversation going
Here are questions from financial planners and Fidelity Investments to help launch a discussion about retirement issues between you and your mate. Answer questions separately. Then compare notes.
1. What's a good day in retirement look like to you?
2. Among retired friends and relatives, whose lifestyle would you like to emulate? How did they do it?
3. What in your mind is keeping you from achieving the retirement of
your dreams?
4. Will you or your
spouse work part time
in retirement?
5. Based on your vision
of retirement, what will your expenses be?
6. Are you confident that either you or your spouse could take over the family finances, if necessary?
As he often does when meeting new clients, financial planner Burt Hutchinson asked a couple around age 60 what a good day in retirement looked like to them.
For the wife, it was working in the garden. For the husband, it was stepping onto a ship for a two-week cruise.
Then came the back-and-forth. She complained that she didn't want to get seasick; he groused that he didn't want to stay at home watching TV.
"You really start getting a little nervous because you don't see where it's going," the Delaware planner says. "We're not all shrinks, by any means."
It's not unusual for couples to not discuss retirement - even after last year's market meltdown - and then be surprised by each other's vision of life after work. A recent survey by Fidelity Investments, for instance, found that 82 percent of couples disagree on at least one of the retirement basics: when to retire, future lifestyle or whether to work in retirement.
Yet these issues are crucial when developing a financial plan to carry you through your later years. Not talking could have serious repercussions if you and your spouse aren't on the same page.
Couples don't talk for various reasons. Some assume their mates want the same thing they do. Others avoid financial discussions that can touch off an argument. And last year's market plunge may have made couples more reluctant to talk about finances.
In fact, Fidelity found that spouses are communicating less than two years ago when it first conducted the couples survey.
"We thought we would see an improvement because of all the economic turmoil," says Joan Bloom, a Fidelity executive vice president. "It seems, in fact, people are talking less or planning less."
