Why and how couples need to get on the same page for retirement planning

The transition from ‘work’ to ‘not working’ is one of the biggest lifestyle changes that anyone experiences in life. Prior to that point a significant proportion of people have from the age of 4 in the UK mostly had the structure within their regular weeks of either being in education or working.

With this huge lifestyle transition comes change and with change comes the potential for conflict, particularly with couples. Potential changes in finance and lifestyle within a short period of time are a recipe for this. Therefore it isn’t much surprise to me to see in the statistics that divorce rates for those over age 65 has been increasing (source ONS Census 2021).

More often than not in my experience the conflicts are often lifestyle related rather than financially related. That could be a difference of opinion about any single or combination of timing, transition, what to do with regular week, how time is spent together and apart or special experiences.

Therefore it is important to ensure that you get on the same page – it is not necessarily about full agreement, but rather about having alignment.

So how can you do it? Well here’s 3 ways in which you can consider doing it.

1.Talk. Sounds simple right? All too often I have sat in meetings on this subject where one partner is surprised by the thoughts of another. Just talking and working through thoughts can help discuss smaller conflict now to reduce larger conflict later.

2.Planning. Engaging with some proper planning – whether that be just be to get things on paper or whether that be full financial planning, putting a bit of time and thought into planning for the future can help produce a

3.Test run. Having completed the two above steps, actually having a go at simulating what a regular week in retirement might look like has the ability to work through any issues and enable you to improve alignment.

So there you have it, time to get to work!