An online survey conducted by Arielle O’Shea at
NerdWallet, a personal finance website, found that many twosomes don’t take advantage of the benefits.
A Harris Poll
recently surveyed more than 1,800 Americans in a relationship — defined as
married or living with a partner — for NerdWallet,
and a third of respondents said neither they nor their partner is saving for
retirement, according to the survey. Here are three of the most worrisome
missteps:
When couples save, they often are doing it in the
wrong accounts
Here’s the general order when it comes to
where you should save for retirement: Contribute to your 401(k) or other
employer-sponsored plan, at least to the point where you earn all possible
matching contributions. Then turn to a traditional or Roth individual
retirement account. If you max that out, you can add more money to the 401(k).
Unfortunately, many Americans in a
relationship who are saving for retirement have somehow worked into that
hierarchy a savings account, which showed up in the NerdWallet survey as the
second most common home for retirement savings.
2. Couples are letting one partner shoulder the
retirement responsibility
It’s not unusual to have an income gap in a relationship;
the wage gap actually widens with marriage and expands more when children come
into play. According to salary comparison site Payscale, married women
without children make 21% less than married men without children. That gap
widens to 31% when you compare married women with children to their male
counterparts.
So it’s not surprising that in the NerdWallet survey, only
24% of Americans in a relationship said both they and their partner are saving
for retirement, or that men in a relationship were more likely to report saving
for retirement than women in a relationship (65% versus 46%).
Saving for retirement is a solo game until you’re married.
After that, it should be a shared effort. That’s not because the non-saver
could be left with nothing in a divorce — how retirement assets are split
depends on your state, but they do get split — but because that person could be
giving up tax advantages and employer-matching dollars.
Even if one spouse earns less, the couple should be
planning retirement account choices together. If only one of you has access to
an employer match, use your shared retirement savings to contribute enough to
catch that match, which is free money and a guaranteed return on your
investment. If you both have an employer match, you should each contribute
enough to take advantage of it.
Couples are not putting a dollar sign on their
dreams
It isn’t hard to talk about the fun parts of retirement,
like how and where you’re going to spend it. I’m not saying these chats aren’t
important — my husband should know that I’m out if he ever buys an RV —
but how you’re going to pay for those dreams should also be part of the
conversation.
The trouble is that, according to the NerdWallet report,
almost a third of Americans in a relationship who are saving for retirement
haven’t discussed how much they need to save. This isn’t a fun part, but it
also isn’t hard: An effective retirement calculator can shoulder some of the
work.
How much you save makes all the difference in retirement.
It means you can live in a beach house instead of a sandcastle. It’s what gives
you a choice about how you’ll spend retirement; without savings, you could
spend it working, and that’s if you’re lucky. Nearly half of retirees left work
earlier than planned, most commonly due to health issues, according to a recent
survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
When you plan for your future, you can hope for the best
while being prepared for the worst.
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