Planning a retirement is complex enough when there’s only one of you, but if you’re in a long-term relationship and you’re planning to stay together, there are even more variables you need to consider, but what’s most important is how you approach it.
Now you’ve finished gathering information on your existing financial position and working out how best to position the pieces for retirement, you need to add your partner’s stuff into the mix, and specifically how to work together to refine your plans for a combined successful retirement.
Your Situation is Unique
Right at the top I should say that I’m aware that there are as many different marital and partnership situations as there are people reading this. Some of you will have been married for decades. Some will have been in relationships before which have broken down and are now in second or subsequent relationships.
To say that our view of the future is coloured by our past is a massive understatement, and when I talk about aligning your retirement with your partner, some of you will be filled with conflicting emotions at the very idea.
But if you’re together now, and you presumably want to stay together into your retirement, then you’re going to need to find a degree of collaboration that works for your unique situation. If you’re expecting me to say you should put everything you possibly can in joint names, then relax; I don’t live in 1950 and neither do you.
Getting this process right together is going to be beneficial for you, as long as you don’t let the process itself be a source of anxiety and tension. But I do believe that you should start from a position of openness and collaboration, looking out for each other and for you as a couple, as a combined unit.
Keep Things Low-Stress
Working together effectively is going to require some care in the way you approach the whole subject. How you do that is informed by your own and your partner’s temperament and predisposition to the whole thing. One thing’s for sure, it cannot be one party imposing their view and plans on the other: ‘Right darling, here’s what we’re going to do!’ That’s not healthy.
The chances are, if you’re in the home straight towards retirement, you’ve had conversations about this whole subject already. Now is the time to take those further. If you have had some concerns about the general direction of those conversation in the past, now is the time, as you get more definite about the whole thing, to make that known and to add your stamp to proceedings.
It’s likely that one partner in the team is more financially dominant. By that I don’t mean that one is earning more than the other, though that may well be true. Instead, I mean one may generally take the lead in terms of the family’s financial management and planning. If that’s you, then you need to take extra care to include and involve your partner as you begin to plan your retirement. And take extra care not to dominate, even as you might be leading the conversation.
If you’re the more passive party, then now’s the time to be strong and to take an interest. This whole subject is not one you can effectively abdicate to your partner. They need to know your feelings and hopes about the process and, in order to plan effectively, especially if your partner will be doing the bulk of that, then they need to know about your plans and current financial arrangements.
Basically, I’m saying that you need to look out for each other, and neither of you needs to roll over. Instead, you need to face this issue head-on. I feel like I’m at the extremities of my field here, but I don’t think I’ve said anything there that isn’t fairly common sense.
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