How to Convince Your Reluctant Spouse to Save for Retirement

Working together with your spouse to accomplish a goal feels incredible, whether you’re building a deck or raising your children. But what do you do when your spouse isn’t on the same page? What do you do when they give you that look—the roll of the eyes, the look of disdain, the “I’m checking out now” glance?

Arguing with your spouse over money and retirement doesn’t work. Instead, try these four time-tested tips to help you catch a shared vision for how you want to spend your retirement years—some of the best years of your life!

Step 1: Take Your Spouse on a Retirement Dream Date

When you define your dream retirement, you’re much more motivated to work for it. Be specific—a foggy dream won’t keep you going while you wait 30 years for the payoff.

To make your retirement plans clear, the first thing you have to do is dream about them together. Sometimes there’s a disconnect between couples on this topic because they’ve never talked about it in detail. Sure, you’ve said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could . . .” But you’ve never actually had a serious, focused conversation about what you want to do in retirement. 

You might be surprised to learn that your husband doubts whether you’ll be able to retire at all. Or that your wife is afraid that the two of you will be bored once you give up the 9-to-5 grind.

The first step in motivating your spouse to save for retirement is to set up a date night where you two talk about nothing but your retirement dreams. Put everything on the table. Don’t worry about how much you have (or haven’t) saved for retirement. Focus only on building a clear picture of what you want your future to look like. Together.

Do you want to travel? Try a new hobby? Spend more time with the kids and grandkids? Go on mission trips? The sky really is the limit. If you’re not excited about what you come up with, you haven’t dreamed big enough!

Step 2: Be Willing to Compromise

Dreaming together will unite you, even if you have different opinions about what your dream retirement looks like. Your wife might have big plans to travel around the world once you’re both retired. But maybe you’d rather take a hot poker to the eye than sit in an airplane for 15 hours!

So what do you do? Compromise. She can plan as many trips as she wants. You’ll tag along with her on some of those, and she can go with her best friends on others. Now you’re on the same page because you both talked it out and reached a compromise.

It’s almost impossible to get fired up about saving for a retirement neither of you find fulfilling. So talk to your spouse about the details of your dream retirement. Find a middle ground. And make sure that dream excites you both!

Step 3: Make Saving Money Fun

Once you’ve outlined your dream together, you’ll see a huge shift in your attitude toward your budget and the Baby Steps. You’ll see how your everyday decisions put you closer to your goal. You’ll be more enthusiastic as you complete one step and move on to the next.

Take grocery shopping, for example. We’ve seen couples who went from spending $1,200 a month on groceries when it was just the two of them to spending $750 a month even after adding kids to the mix! How’d they do that? As a team, those couple focused on cutting the grocery bill and constantly looked for ways to spend less.

Now it’s a game. That’s how you turn a point of tension into a point of connection. You and your spouse are battling together instead of battling each other! 

Step 4: Work With an Investment Professional

Here’s the point: When you and your spouse take the time to decide on your goals and how you will work toward them together, you can accomplish much more than one of you alone. That’s the power your shared retirement dream gives you.

But as great as it is to work toward your dream together, there’s one more thing you need to make it a reality: a strong retirement investment strategy. Without that, dreaming about retirement becomes a daydream, not a real and achievable goal.

We always encourage people to work with an investment professional they trust. You need someone who will understand your goals, someone you can work with for a long, long time. It’s your advisor’s job to teach you:

• How to choose good investments

• How to avoid risk with a balanced investing approach

• How to keep a long-term, disciplined perspective on your retirement investments

In other words, a good investment pro will help you have confidence in your retirement plan so you are motivated to stick with it and actually reach your dream retirement savings goal. When we completed the largest study of millionaires ever done, we found that 68% of them used an advisor to help them reach their seven-figure net worth. Saving for retirement is too important to try and figure out on your own!   

If you’d like to work with an experienced investing advisor who has earned our recommendation for great advice and excellent service, we can put you in touch with a SmartVestor Pro in your area today!

This article provides general guidelines about investing topics. Your situation may be unique. To discuss a plan for your situation, connect with a SmartVestor Pro. Ramsey Solutions is a paid, non-client promoter of participating Pros.