Retirement and spouse - same age or same time?

[Ohrightyho]

DH is 4 years older than me. Theoretically, is it fair or best to retire at the same age or at the same time?

I’ve been upping my pension contributions with the aim of retiring at 63. DH and I have similar sized pension pots at the moment, so that would mean he could afford to retire at the same time as me, but he’d be 67. Is that fair? Should I sacrifice some of my retirement plans so he can retire earlier? (If he retired at 64 say, his pension pot would be a little light). Or best to retire at the same time and have fun together, but I’d get to retire younger.

I think this might be one of the reasons women used to get state pension at 60 and men 65.

I say theoretical because I’m sure life and careers will throw some curve balls before then. More likely we’ll both work part time for a bit. We’ve also got to get twins through university first 😭

It occurred to me because (a) I need to get DH to sit down and look at pension planning with me and (b) a family member recently retired mid-50s, his wife is still working and as far as I know she’ll carry on working until 67, which seems rather unfair to me! - caveat I’ve no idea what their actual decisions are and none of my business, I know.

I think there are many other factors in play.
It isn't about 'being fair' or otherwise.

Some people love their job, others hate their job. Many will be somewhere in between, but that makes a BIG difference to how long you want to keep doing your job.
Same with how physically demanding your job (or your job and commute) are.
Then, what your friends or your 'social circle' are doing.

Whether you have grandchildren and how involved you are with them
How long you have been at work. My dh won't finish until some years after me, but he didn't start his career until several years after me, for example. There's things he is still looking to achieve.
Your finances generally - finishing early 'to get by' is different from finishing early with savings aplenty.
Being close to someone who retired then dropped dead from a heart attack or being close to someone who had a stroke at a relatively young age or who has been given a terminal cancer diagnosis tends to then make people reassess their life choices. The 'what if....s' start to creep in to your thinking.
What you have planned for your retirement affects choices to. If you plan to do some extended holidays abroad, you want to do them as young as you can. If you both plan to stay at home, and do a bit of gardening, then there's less urgency.

I'm sure there are lots of other things too.

Im only late 30s, but definitely consider my husbands pension (significantly larger than mine) to be our pension. We will both retire when we can afford/want to. One after the other seems really strange to me unless the age gap is huge.

DH is 5 years older than me and can get his final salary pension at 63, then his state pension at 67 and I can get my state pension at 68 which will be ten years after DH gets his main pension.

I will probably retire at the same time as him. All our money is completely joint and if we need to top up until I get my state pension I have a small private pension pot (£90k) which can fill the gap for those years. Hopefully we won’t need that though as I view it really as a savings pot to help DC. We shouldn’t need it.

We have both had periods of being the main earner and our pot has always been shared so our planning is based on his very good pension as I’m self employed and don’t have an employer paying in. It will be half his very decent salary and we have no mortgage and kids are no longer financially reliant on us.

DH will struggle to fully retire and may well end up doing project work on and off but that a choice he can make at the time. Having had a close family member suddenly pass away in their early fifties, I think it’s important to just retire and not delay as long as we can afford it (and that should be fine).

There isn’t a one size fits all here.
I’m 4 years older than my DH. I claimed my teacher pension when I was 59 and a bit, continued to work FT for a year then went PT (4 days, and then 3 days) by the time I was 61. Since then, I’ve been working 2 days, and intend to do so until I receive my State pension next academic year. DH has no private pension. When I reduced my days to 4, he reduced his to 4 too, then again to 25 hours a week. He wont reduce them again until he gets his state pension. So I will be fully retired for 3 years by the time he fully retires. We’ve both reduced our incomes to the point that what we currently earn will remain the same when we are fully retired. I will have worked approx 3 more years than him, as he didn't work much in his 20s for various reasons (before we met).

To answer your thread title question: in our case, neither. My husband retired at 70, then unretired because he was bored, and finally retired at 72. I semi-retired two years after that when I was 64.

I’ve just turned down a contract (I am a self-employed consultant) and have no plans to bid for work, so I guess I’ve just retired, five years after my husband, and still three years younger than when he chose to.

I’ve no idea whether others would see that as fair. What was more important to us is that we were both happy with our choices.

My husband is 7 years older than me , he is still working ft (from home) in his mid 60s , I retired in my late 40s . Our finances are completely shared and always have been , managed by me . We could afford for him to retire but he’s happy doing what he does at the moment . I start getting my NHS pension next year .

We have a 10th year age gap. My husband recently retired at nearly 65. We are not in a financial position for me to retire yet. I am saving to try to be able to retire earlier than state pension age, but don't know when it will be, only that it is a way off. At the moment I am enjoying having a happier husband and having few chores to do at home.

DH and I were born in the same year so thankfully will retire at the same age when we retire together. Even if there was a difference we’d retire at the same time. Pension pots are joint as far as I’m concerned. Mine is much bigger because I’ve had better schemes through my employment and now I pay much more to mine than DH as it just makes sense for us based on the schemes we have. I don’t see that as meaning I can retire earlier.

My DH and I did same time, I don’t think our lifestyle world work with one of us working as we’ve been travelling a lot since retirement.

This is exactly the same for us.

My DH is 6 years older than me. He "retired" two years ago after a redundancy at 54 but we have not started taking his pension yet. Our finances are fully shared.

We are not quite at our target retirement investment yet (close - am hoping the markets will do a lot of the heavy lifting for us) and youngest DS still has two years of high school to go so we are tied to home for now. I am the sole breadwinner for now. DH has started a lot of hobbies to pass the time but has itchy feet for travelling so has decided to go back to work for two years to help our investment pot along so I can retire sooner to hang out with him.

I am only 50 and quite like my job and have just hit my stride career wise with two recent promotions so not sure if I really want to retire at 52. Have not told him this yet! But will cross that bridge when we come to it...

I think what is ‘fair’ is subjective. I hope to retire in the next year or 2 (I’m 55 now) but DH (61) has no plans to at the moment unless he is made redundant. It is highly likely that I will go down to 1 day a week this year and retire fully at 57. I want to travel more and have hobbies but at the moment he says he doesn’t and not sure what he would do without work, we also have 2 teenagers about to start Uni and he wants to see them settled before he makes any changes. However finances are not an issue so is it fair that I should wait till he is ready and potentially lose 5 years of healthy retirement. I had DD very young with 2 DS after she turned 18 so have been through the parenting stage of life twice now and want to do more with life before I get too old. DH is happy with my plans and I don’t see it as unfair at all.

We have just retired. DH 54 me 51. Both decided we could live on our joint savings until we can draw our private pensions as had a life it too short moment.

3 years younger than dp, current plan is to go part time when he retires - he'll be 63 and I'll be 60. We'll see how that feels for a while. My pension isn't brilliant but I get most of it at 60. Job is draining but not too physically demanding - so working till 67 is feasible and may be necessary.

had a life it too short moment

51? How are you going to fill the next - potentially - 30 plus years? I know none of us can take it for granted (my mum died in her 40s) but how much leisure time/travelling can you do before you get bored?

DH and I are nearly the same age, just a few months apart, so we'll probably retire together, hopefully at around 60 (in 9 years).

Not sure what we'd do if there was an age gap. I think we'd retire together unless one person wanted to carry on.

I am 5 years younger than DH.

He retired from lecturing at 59 but I carried on working for another 5 years until I was 59 at which time DH convinced me to retire.

It was somewhat easier for us though as I ran my own business from my home office so once DH retired I could use him as my "Gofer". 😁

There is a huge difference between good quality of life and life. We are currently in the process of downsizing and then plan to spend time on an allotment, more holidays and just generally getting involved in the local community events and u3a type things. Both of us have worked full time since leaving school with no breaks and have seen friends and relatives die or struggle with health as well as feeling our own health isn’t what it was a few years ago. Personally I would rather have a decade of good health doing what we want rather than flogging our self at work.

I know a few people that get bored not working but this is not us and both agreed that we are not missing work and if we did then yes we could do ‘something’ but at present neither of us have an desire to return to paid work.

This is exactly what happened with us. We both retired in April after a health scare - I'm 60, DH is 66. Best decision we've ever made!

Still in our mid 50’s we’ve had a couple of years of retirement now. We’ve moved continents, bought a new home, traveled extensively, both improved our level of fitness and throughly enjoyed ourselves.

We retired in 2017 when l was 57 and DH was 62.
Never regretted it . Best thing we ever did it's so freeing .

We are hoping to do same time. I'm 15 months older.
My DB NHS pension is still available to me at 60 with minimal losses so DH is planning to go then too. He will be 58 with a reasonable private pension pot.
We have paid our mortgage and have a few cash ISAs.
One teen hoping to go to uni, so we may both stay on until he is financially independent.
We hope to save a fair bit more in the next 4 years.

DH is 10 years older than me and 58 now, he will be working until state pension age so 67. I have an NHS pension which i have been paying into since 1999 and will be taking with reduction at 57 so we can both go together and then use some of my lump sum to top up until state pension kicks in, would possibly carry on doing another 1-2 days a week bank. He will be a really old man if I go at 67 and i want to spend some years travelling if we can and health permitting.

Planning on same time, 55 and 53. Were planning a move on retirement so it wouldn’t be possible for one of us to carry on in the same job.

I retired 4 years ago at 52 and so far so good. I love to travel, see a lot of my elderly DM, support my DS who is doing through something at the moment, see my friends, do my hobbies. What’s not to love?
I am fortunate to never get bored.