In its latest study released this month, Fidelity asked about 500 couples ages 45 to 72 to fill out a questionnaire separately and then compared the answers. Among the findings: 60 percent didn't agree on the age to retire; 44 percent disagreed on working in retirement
Yet when you quit work matters significantly.
"It determines how long your pot of money has to last in retirement," says Tony Webb, a research economist with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. "It also determines how long you have to accumulate wealth for retirement."
It might also determine when to take Social Security benefits, a crucial decision for men, who still tend to earn more and die earlier than their wives.
"The danger is the husband claims [Social Security] early, and the husband goes off and dies and leaves his widow without enough money," Webb says. "We know that most poverty among the elderly is among elderly widows."
Fidelity also found a significant number of spouses didn't see eye to eye on what investments they owned. Nearly 40 percent, for instance, didn't agree on whether they owned an annuity.
Men across all ages tend to make more of the long-term investment decisions for the couple, the survey found. Wives, too, are less likely to know the balances in retirement accounts.
Even so, 57 percent of couples told Fidelity that the best money-management advice they could give newlyweds is to make all financial decisions together. "Yet they are not doing it," Bloom says.
Many planners say they give new clients a questionnaire that each spouse fills out separately. When answers differ, the planners try to work out a compromise.
Hutchinson says his clients, the wannabe traveler and gardener, struck a deal. One year, they travel to a site selected by the wife. The next, they stay home and do an activity chosen by the husband. And so on.
Hutchinson says once clients have these conversations, they often say they wished they had started talking five or 10 years earlier.
"The critical thing is to talk about it. ... The more people plan, the better off they will be," Bloom says. "You don't have to attack the whole conversation at once."
Get the conversation going by researching retirement issues on the Internet together or trying out one of the online retirement income calculators, Bloom suggests.
