Tips for Half-Retired Couples
photo credit: precariopoli
It’s becoming increasingly common for only one half of a couple to retire first, leaving the other to work for longer- in fact, statistics suggest that only 20% of couples both retire within the same year. Rather than causing conflict, this is actually a good opportunity to test-run retirement in a financial sense, as long as you follow some of these tips:
- Check on health-care: make sure the retiring partner will either be covered by Medicare (after age 65), their former employer’s plan (sometimes possible for up to 18 months) or the working partner’s plan.
- Check on Social Security: taking it earlier might be a disadvantage when the working partner retires, depending on who was the bigger earner. Check on future implications carefully.
- Re-examine the household duties: the non-working partner should take care of more of the home duties while the other half continues to work. Negotiating this could be tricky depending on how duties were shared while both were working.
- Make sure the retiring partner stays active: either through social clubs or outings, volunteer work or a part-time job.
- Consider changing spending habits: look into which activities and expenditures have been making up a large part of your budget while working and see what adjustments can be made - for example, maybe only one car is necessary now instead of two.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 5:49 am and is filed under Retirement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
