"MY Retirement!" "No, MY Retirement!"

Filed in archive Finance , Marriage and Finance , Retirement on July 25, 2006

My wife has a dream of a vacation home that is within driving distance, a place to spend the weekends in relaxation. i have a dream of warm weather, escaping the Cleveland winter for a sunny clime for 3 or 4 months. We both know that our dreams don't jibe, but we're not close enough to reaching either of them to have taken the time to fight it out. So we just leave it hanging. After all, who knows where we'll be in 10 years, much less 25 or 30?

But for those closing in on retirement, these are big questions, as Sandra Block points out in this USA Today column.

What if you want to sell the house and hit the road in your RV, while your spouse wants to finally get the chance to work on that garden that never quite got tended during the work years? Or what if your kids and grandkids live close by and only one partner wants to get away for the winter months (or travel the world in the summer months)? What if you have limited funds but different ideas on how to spend them?

And, when are you going to retire? Are you going to retire together, or, if you don't, will this cause resentment on one or both sides of the relationship?

According to the experts in Block's column, you should be discussing these things long before retirement. In fact, my wife and I should be discussing them now. We're not. Well, we are, but then we get annoyed and let the discussion drop.

I can't really see how we will come to agreement on this. I wonder how others do. Imagine having a happy marriage for years and then having a dreadful retirement because you want different things. What a way to go out, huh?

So, couples -- have you had this discussion? If so, how did you resolve any differences in your thoughts?