Should Couples Retire Together?

Welcome back, everyone.

Peter, very good to see you. We have an important question today. Should couples retire together? Couples should carefully consider the financial and emotional consequences of retiring simultaneously before making that decision. So you have four questions you want people to walk through before they finally make up their minds.

First question is, have you correctly calculated your cost of living in retirement? Why is that question number one? Well, because every day is a Saturday on vacation. And I know that my time is either spent making and earning money at work or out there in the world spending money. And the day after retirement, you don't have the work.

You have all the free time in the world. So that is more time and temptation to go out and be spending money. Plus, you've got the list of items that you always envisioned retirement to be about that you want to go and do all of a sudden because you got the time. And so you're planning more trips, more activities, more vacations, more of those bucket list items. So yeah, the first several years of retirement especially can be a shock to the expense column of the ledger. And people are surprised that they are spending more money than A, they're used to spending or B, then they even anticipated. And so then things get to tighten up a little bit because when you see more money going out and you're saying, hey, we're only a year or two into retirement here. We've got an unknown amount of time and only this finite amount of money to last as long.

All of a sudden you start not doing all of those things that you anticipated. And so there's a balance there. You need to keep it between the guard rails, so to speak. And you need a plan to help you determine those guardrails. I'm glad you brought that up because according to a recent study, 46% of older adults spend more money during their first few years of retirement than before they had retired.

So that's a great point. All right, question number two, when is the best time for each person to claim social security? Well, you can't look at it alone, meaning I can't look at my individual benefit and you look at your individual benefit and not coordinate them, not bring those pieces together because there are strategies between a married couple where you can coordinate benefits or delay and claim a spousal benefit while your own continues to grow and accrue or switch when yours becomes more down the road. And then also not just on the front end of retirement, but on the back end with survivor benefits for that widow or widower, how can we make sure that we have maximized the potential survivorship income from social security because there is as little as a one third decrease, as much as a half decrease when one of the social securities goes away because one person only receives one social security benefit.

The survivor will bump up to the higher of the two, but it is important to coordinate the benefits not only for the front end of retirement to to get some some baseline income going, but also for the duration of retirement. This is a stream of lifetime income that we've got to make decisions at 62 or 66, 67, 70 when in there. But those decisions may not impact us until 86, 90 years old or or beyond even. And sometimes after our own lifetime, they will impact and affect our spouse.

Next question. Do you feel ready to retire? I think couples maybe underestimate the fact that all of a sudden they're retired and they're nose to nose with each other, spending a lot more time together.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it is not only a financial question. It is a mental, emotional, psychological question. And what's not talked about is there's actually a high degree of depression in retirement because we're hardwired psychologically to be active and active in the be active and motivated. And it is not for everyone to just hang it up and set aside the phenomenon you mentioned there alluded to of being in very close quarters with your spouse for much more time than you are used to, but not having the job to go to.

Maybe it is not something where we completely hang it up. You don't necessarily have to continue on with the career and the same job in the same position, the same stresses that you've had for the last 25 or 30 years. But to just be unemployed, a lot of people don't find that really appealing. The idea of it might sound appealing, but you do that and you don't have activity and you don't have social interaction and you don't have motivation for three months, six months, nine months.

And and all of a sudden, wow, we start to really unravel a little bit. And so maybe we get some other kind of position that isn't as stressful, isn't as taxing, isn't as demanding, but still gives us that that motivation to get up and go somewhere and do something and have the social interaction. But yeah, then then again, what you did allude to there as much time right there, face to face, nose to nose with our spouse. I've seen some some funny comments in cartoons where retirement ends very quickly because we are not used to having those close quarters and maybe rub each other the wrong way, potentially more more than we thought or ever imagined we would. So, yeah, you have to think those things through maybe a trial retirement, maybe something where you're phasing back and instead of a full time job, you've got something part time or just to take up a few hours of the day to keep motivated and active. And then the last question, I guess just as important as all the others, though, do you have a good retirement plan?

Right. And you have to have a plan, right? You don't just jump in the pool without ever having taken swim lessons or knowing how to swim or at least having a little life preserver close by. And likewise, jumping into retirement is a bit of an act of faith.

You've got to have a plan for how you're going to make it on that other side. You got to map things out, not only the Social Security that we just spoke about, that is a part of it, but from a high level income and the Social Security falls into that income category. But so do pensions and withdrawals and distributions from your retirement savings investments. And what what are you going to be able to count and rely on from your investment portfolio? Or how do you project out that they work for you and the order of operations and which to tap into the different buckets of investments that you may have built for yourself than taxes?

How is how is each withdrawal and each stream of income going to be taxed? Health care and legacy. All of these things really must be addressed, I think, in anyone's plan. And certainly on the day that we retire with the unknown amount of time in front of us, the assets that we have available to us, not planning on earning or contributing to them in 401Ks or things like that. Again, we've got to have that plan in place. That is what's going to give us a high degree of confidence that we can live the lifestyle that we envision living and continue to be comfortable for the years to come through those different phases.

The go go years, the slow go years, the no go years. There's kind of a reverse bell curve there, as I've mentioned, where the spending sort of draws down a little bit after we we do those bucket list items. But inflation needs to be factored in.

Health care expenses need to be factored in. And all of that is the plan ahead of time so that we're not caught off guard and surprised by them 10, 15, 20 years into retirement when it's too late to do anything about it. And, you know, talking through these questions, Peter, it just underscores the importance of having a plan and thinking this through sooner rather than later.

It is a very emotional decision, more than just a financial one. So what's the best way somebody can reach you with questions? Yeah. Give us a call. We are happy to talk through the emotional and the financial elements of making this transition to retirement with you and putting that plan together. We call it the optimized retirement plan.

It does address income, investments, taxes, health care and legacy. And to get started in that process, to have that plan in your hands, give us a call. Nine one nine three zero zero five eight eight six.

Again, that is nine one nine three hundred fifty eight eighty six nine one nine three zero zero five eight eight six. You can also visit online. It looks like rich on planning dot com. And you don't get rich or stay rich on accident. It's a play on my last name.

My last name is Rashan. It's Rashan planning dot com. But you do need to have that plan. So rich on planning dot com is what it looks like.

You can email me, Peter at Rashan, planning dot com as well. All right, Peter, thank you very much. Always a pleasure. And thank you.

Everyone, Peter Rashan here. Hope you enjoy the content. As always, make sure that you like, subscribe, share the videos with others that may find this information helpful. And as always, you're welcome to be in touch or to submit questions or comments. You can comment below the video anything that you'd like to see or hear shared on our YouTube channel and in future videos. If you've got a topic that you've been thinking about or is of concern for you financially, be sure to let us know. We'd love to help you by discussing it on the channel. So appreciate the continued views and the likes and the subscribes, the shares, the comments, always helpful. We look forward to getting you the information that you need.

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