Weekend Reading: For Couples, a Happy Retirement Requires Shared Goals
This article appears as part of Casey Weade's Weekend Reading for Retirees series. Every Friday, Casey highlights four hand-picked articles on trending retirement topics and delivers them straight to your email inbox. Get on the list here.
You might go through various major life transitions with your partner, such as having and raising kids, changing careers and even your transition into retirement. You experience many of these events together, and new research shows that part of the success of your retirement plan actually depends on how involved your partner is in the process.
READ THE ARTICLEIt takes two: In addition to the importance of making financial and retirement decisions alongside your partner, this article highlights how crucial it is to be aligned on your vision together for the future. According to recent studies, this sense of “interconnectedness” was associated with elevated ease of retirement and feelings of well-being during the retirement transition. Not only did behaving more collectively allow couples to feel more confident about their future, but it also strengthened the relationship during one of life’s biggest events.
Bottom line: You should regularly assess the financial goals and vision you share with your spouse. It can be easy over the years to enter default mode, which is one of the many reasons to embrace the fact that marriage is hard work.