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September 13, 2016 at 11:48 AM
Couples do a lot of things together — including making mistakes when it comes to retirement and money, according to NerdWallet — which surveyed 1,800 Americans in a relationship (married or living with a partner) to see how they handled financial decisions.
And what they found was that couples were making a number of substantial mistakes when approaching saving for retirement. Among those errors:
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- Failing to take action.
- Not talking to one another about what they were (or weren’t) doing.
- Making basic mistakes on how to take advantage of various retirement savings strategies.
- Having no idea of what their savings targets should be.
Some of these are simple communication issues, since it’s not easy for people to talk about money — sometimes especially with those closest to them.
But other mistakes go deeper — and sometimes both partners know about it, but just don’t take steps to change behaviors that can endanger a couple’s retirement. Other times, one partner’s ignorance of what the other is doing — or not doing — can be the problem.
(Related: 5 Shocking Facts About Retirement Health Care Costs)
Regardless of how deep the problem is and what causes it, some of those mistakes can endanger a couple’s retirement, since they can derail savings and leave them without enough money to live on once they’ve departed the workplace. Or those mistakes could mean that one, or both, halves of a couple won’t be retiring at all.
Here’s a look at eight mistakes the survey found couples making when it comes to preparing for retirement:
How much will we need for retirement? Couples need to focus on this question. (Photo: Getty)
8. They don’t deal in specifics
While 76 percent of Americans in a relationship in which at least one partner is saving for retirement say they’ve discussed general retirement planning, such as the age at which they might like to retire, where they might want to live and what they want to do, they don’t get into the nuts-and-bolts issues—like how much money they’ll need.
In fact, 30 percent of respondents in a relationship who said at least one partner was saving for retirement said they haven’t discussed how much they should be saving to get them through their retired years.
Fewer than half of workers or their spouses have tried to figure out their retirement needs. (Photo: Getty)
7. They just don’t want to know
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, fewer than half of workers or their spouses have attempted to figure out their retirement needs. Why not? Fear.
The NerdWallet report quoted Jack VanDerhei, EBRI research director, saying, “People are too scared to see the results, or they think they are too old to do anything to improve their overall retirement adequacy.” He continued, “But no matter how bad the news is, you’ll be a lot better off if you start dealing with it today.”
Many partners don’t know their spouse’s contribution rate they’re saving for retirement. (Photo: Getty)
6. They keep it a big secret
People in a relationship aren’t necessarily letting their partners know how much they’re saving toward retirement, with 21 percent who are putting money away saying that their partners don’t know their contribution rate.
Few respondents in the survey said they had a brokerage account. (Photo: Getty)
