The Retirement Conversation Most Couples Keep Putting Off

For many of our clients, years of focused preparation and disciplined strategy have been aimed at a single goal: arriving at retirement in a position to live the life they envisioned. The investment accounts, the income strategy, and all the other considerations—all of it was built toward that moment.

And then the moment arrives. The financial side may be largely in order. What is sometimes less thought through is the life side. Where they will actually be. How their days may look. What each person is genuinely looking forward to. Whether the two of them have been picturing the same retirement at all.

Research suggests that many have not.

Fidelity's 2024 Couples and Money Study tested 1,794 couples by surveying each partner separately. What it found was striking:

• 53 percent of pre-retired couples disagree on how much they need to save for retirement
• 48 percent disagree on when they intend to retire
• 45 percent argue about money at least occasionally, yet most believe they communicate well

The gaps are the kinds of misalignments that may surface at an unexpected moment, sometimes after one partner has already made a major decision that the other was not expecting.¹

The Timing Problem

Nearly two-thirds of working couples expect to retire at the same time or within a year of each other. According to Ameriprise Financial's 2024 Couples, Money and Retirement study, only 11 percent actually do. More than 62 percent end up retiring more than a year apart, even when that was never the goal.²

When it happens by surprise rather than by design, the household dynamic can shift in ways many couples are not prepared for. The retired partner may lose professional identity and daily structure. The still-working partner may come home to a different kind of pressure. Neither tends to show up in a financial strategy.

The Conversations Worth Having Now

Retirement preparation tends to be thorough on the financial side and thinner on everything else. These are six questions that can reveal meaningful gaps in retirement expectations:

• Where will we live, and have we both truly agreed? This is often the question with the largest financial consequences and the longest lead time. Cost of living, proximity to family, and what to do with the primary residence may all depend on having a real answer, not an assumed one.
• What does each person need to feel purposeful? Retirement removes the structure many people have organized their lives around for decades. Couples who navigate this transition more smoothly tend to be the ones who have thought about what may replace work, not just financially but personally. Board service, consulting, a creative practice, a physical commitment, a volunteer role. For many people, these are closely tied to identity.
• How will healthcare costs actually land? A 65-year-old retiring today can expect to spend approximately $172,500 on healthcare over the course of retirement. For a couple, that figure is roughly $345,000. These estimates cover Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket costs but do not include long-term care.³
  
  Medicare is also more complex than many people anticipate, with income-based surcharges, potential coverage gaps for couples with an age difference, and meaningful trade-offs between premium cost and provider access that may differ for each partner.
• What if one person needs extended care? According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 56 percent of adults turning 65 between 2021 and 2025 are expected to need some form of long-term services and support.⁴
  
  Research from Morningstar found that a couple facing those expenses may see their wealth decrease by an average of 21 percent over nine years.⁵
  
  The options available at 70 are often more limited and more costly than those available earlier in the process.
• How will Social Security be coordinated for both partners? Claiming strategy is among the more consequential decisions a couple makes and one that benefits from an advanced framework. The timing of one partner's claim can affect the survivor benefit available to the other. While benefits may begin as early as 62, delaying to age 70 raises the monthly benefit to its maximum. In 2026, the difference between claiming at 62 versus 70 is more than $2,200 per month.⁶
• Is there a formal strategy, or just assumptions? Among couples with at least $100,000 in investable assets and within ten years of retirement, Ameriprise's 2024 research found that 41 percent have no formal financial strategy, 39 percent have no retirement income strategy, and 52 percent have no estate strategy.²
  
  These are not couples who lack resources. They are couples who may not yet have had the full conversation.

Retirement Is More Than a Financial Finish Line

The financial side of retirement matters enormously. But couples who tend to feel more settled in retirement are often the ones who have also worked through the harder questions: what their days may actually look like, whether their individual visions align, and what they may do when the unexpected happens. Those conversations are worth having well before the date on the calendar arrives.

If any of this raises questions, we are here to talk them through.

^{1. BusinessWire.com, April 2026}

^{2. Ameriprise.com, April 2026}

^{3. NewsRoom.Fidelity.com, July 30, 2025}

^{4. AARP.org, March 12, 2026}

^{5. CFSWV.com, January 2, 2024}

^{6. SSA.gov, January 2026}