Growing Old Together: A Couple’s Guide to Planning What Comes Next
Start with what you each want your life together to look like as you age, and what you want for each other and your kids. Share those answers before you talk about money. Then decide together how care would be paid for, whether from savings, family help, or insurance.
What do you each want your life to look like?
Planning for aging goes better when it starts with what you want, not with what you fear. Picture the two of you in 15 or 20 years. What does a good day look like?
Questions to answer on your own first
Take about ten minutes each, separately, before you compare notes:
- What does a good day look like for us in our 70s and 80s?
- Where do we want to live?
- What do we most want to keep doing together, and apart?
- If one of us needed help, what would we want the other to do, and not do?
- What do we want for our kids, and what would we never want to put on them?
- What worries us most?
Then take turns sharing, without trying to fix anything. Notice where you match and where you differ, and write a few sentences you both agree on. That’s your shared picture.
How do you look after each other?
When one partner needs help, the other is often the first to step in. Caregiving takes time, health, and money, so it helps to decide ahead of time:
- When you’d bring in paid help
- How you’d protect the caregiver’s health, time, and finances
- What the partner who remains would need, since money spent on one person’s care isn’t available to the other later
See Aging in Place as a Couple.
What about your kids, or others who would be involved?
Decide what role, if any, you’d want your children to play, and what you’d want to spare them. Then tell them, so they aren’t left guessing. If you don’t have children, the same applies to siblings, nieces and nephews, or friends who might help. Staying Power’s “Talking With Your Family” guide can help you start that conversation.
How could care be paid for?
The main options are savings, family help, Medicaid after you’ve spent down most of your assets, and long-term care insurance, each with tradeoffs. See Long-Term Care Insurance vs. Medicaid and What Is a Long-Term Care Funding Strategy?.
Where does long-term care insurance fit?
Look at your shared picture and ask which parts insurance helps with and which it doesn’t. It can help pay for care at home, so staying in your home is more likely to stay workable, and it can ease the load on your kids. With the coverage we offer, it can also pay a family member you choose when a plan of care supports that. See Can Long-Term Care Insurance Pay a Family Member as a Caregiver?. It doesn’t replace a plan for who helps or where you live.
- Individual or joint: Each person is underwritten individually, so one of you may not qualify, and with a shared pool one partner can use the whole benefit. See Long-Term Care Insurance for Couples and What to Expect in Long-Term Care Insurance Underwriting.
- It may not fit if the premiums would strain your budget. The NAIC offers a rule of thumb that a policy may be unaffordable above about 7% of income. (NAIC Shopper’s Guide)
A checklist to do together
- Write down your shared picture.
- Look at what care costs. See How Much Does Long-Term Care Cost?.
- Decide how you’d pay.
- If you want coverage, compare individual and joint options.
- Put documents in place with an attorney. See Planning Ahead for Cognitive Decline.
- Name who would help, and how.
- Tell your kids what you’ve decided.
- Set a date to revisit the plan.
What if you disagree?
Start from the shared picture and decide in stages. You don’t have to settle everything at once, and a neutral third party, like a care manager or a financial advisor, can help.
Staying Power is a licensed insurance agency that helps couples plan how care would be paid for, starting with what the two of you want.
Get started to see what care costs and how to fund it.
Frequently asked questions
How do we start planning for aging as a couple?
Start by each writing down what you want your life to look like as you age, then share your answers without trying to fix anything. Decisions about money and insurance come after you know what matters to both of you.
What if one of us wants coverage and the other doesn’t?
Each person is underwritten and decides individually. You can plan together while choosing different coverage, and one partner may not qualify. An agent can explain the options.
Do we have to buy a joint policy?
No. Couples can buy individual policies or a joint policy. Each has tradeoffs, and a shared benefit pool can be used by either partner, including all of it by one.
