Today’s question is about retirement goals: How do I get on the same page as my spouse?

Remember, You’re on the Same Team

One of the best things in life is to be in a loving relationship, something where you’re looking out for someone else, and you know that they’re looking out for you. That’s when we start looking at retirement goals and negotiating what those look like. That’s what we start with, to remember that, because sometimes negotiating in retirement can seem like something completely different than what we’ve done so far. The truth is if you’ve been in a relationship for 5, 10, 20, 30 years, you’ve spent that time negotiating with the person that you love.

Sometimes it can be something as simple as, “Where are we going to eat tonight?” and we know how that question can go sometimes. But in the end, you end up somewhere having a meal with the person that you love that you both enjoy. So, vacations can be a pretty good illustration, and I often think that we spend more time planning our yearly vacation than we do planning for our 25–30-year retirement, but when we do look at vacation, oftentimes there can be differences at the beginning of the conversation.

Working Through Differences

One person wants to go hiking at Mount Zion, and they want to see all the wonders while walking miles a day. The other person wants to go to a resort on a beach, rest, get some sun, and drink umbrella drinks all day. Each year, through that conversation, you manage to negotiate to the vacation that you both take and that you both enjoy. So, retirement, while ideally it’s like a 20 or 30-year vacation, that’s what we all hope for, it’s the same thing is to start looking at those goals and see what we want.

Prioritize Your Goals

Oftentimes the problems can come up because we think there’s not enough money to do both. Oftentimes with working with a trusted advisor, you can find that with the right planning, those things can all be accomplished.

Negotiate What You Both Want

So, it’s not necessarily about giving up everything that you want. It’s about negotiating and getting some of what you want, while giving the person you love what they want. That’s really negotiation, and that is the ingredient that’ll make for a happy retirement.

A trusted advisor can help you see how those things come together and help you pay for it because, in the end, the money that you save is not necessary. It’s not about the money itself, but it’s about the life in retirement that that money will provide.