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Why May‑December Couples Need a Different Retirement Plan
Tips for spouses with a large age gap on how to approach retirement timing, long-term care planning and other key decisions
7-minute read
Lily Qian
Key takeaways
- Retiring at the same time might not make financial sense for couples with a large age gap, especially if the younger spouse has an opportunity to keep building their Social Security benefits.
- Delaying collecting Social Security can increase survivor benefits and provide more income protection for a younger spouse after a partner dies.
- Planning for taxes, health coverage and long-term care can help protect assets for a younger spouse’s retirement.
They say love conquers all, and it can certainly overcome an age gap. Still, for a couple with a large age difference, crafting a retirement plan that fits both partners’ needs requires a bit more work than it does for spouses with similar ages.
May-December couples — those in a relationship with a considerable age difference — face unique financial hurdles. The same nest egg has to support widely differing retirement dates and life expectancies. Financial and health care concerns may muddle plans to spend as much time together as possible in retirement.
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Careful planning can help such couples navigate the financial realities of an age-gap relationship. Here are expert-recommended retirement planning tips if you’re significantly older than your spouse.
Think twice before the younger spouse retires early
Two-thirds of working couples want to retire at the same time or within a year of each other, according to a 2024 report from Ameriprise Financial. But that could lead a younger spouse to leave the workforce prematurely.
Retiring too early may mean losing out on valuable years to grow retirement savings, taking reduced Social Security benefits and having to buy health insurance. Without access to Medicare (for which eligibility starts at age 65) or employer-provided insurance, younger spouses will need to purchase their own health care coverage.
“If you have to pay out of pocket privately, a 60-year-old could be looking at easily $1,000 a month for health insurance, which can be a big shock that many folks do not anticipate or plan for,” says Matthew Saneholtz, president of Tobias Financial Advisors in Plantation, Florida. (You can get a personalized cost estimate of your premiums using the health insurance marketplace calculator offered by KFF, a health policy nonprofit.)
Leaving the workforce too soon could also put a large dent in one’s Social Security payment, since benefits are calculated using an individual’s highest 35 years of pay. If a younger spouse retires before hitting that 35-year mark, they’ll receive a zero for each year without earnings, lowering their benefit.
Consider delaying collecting Social Security
The earliest you can start taking Social Security retirement benefits is age 62. But for older spouses, it might make sense to wait.
If you claim your benefit at age 62, you’ll receive 30 percent less than if you wait until 67, when you reach full retirement age (depending on your birth date). After that, your Social Security benefit increases by about 8 percent for each year you delay until age 70, allowing you to build a larger base of inflation-protected income to support and sustain a younger spouse.
To make a claim on a spouse’s earning record, the younger spouse’s own Social Security payout must be worth less than half their higher-earning partner’s. Once the older spouse dies, though, the younger partner can claim a survivor benefit, entitling them to the deceased’s full Social Security payment, provided the amount is higher than their own.
“The survivor benefit could be the younger spouse’s primary income source for potentially a long stretch,” says Jeff Judge, managing partner at Chesapeake Financial Planners in Forest Hill, Maryland. “Getting that number as high as it can go is often the most important decision in the whole retirement plan.”
You can use the Social Security Administration’s retirement estimate calculator to see what you and your spouse’s benefits would be at different ages. Then determine what claiming strategy would work best for your relationship.
Approach RMDs strategically
The IRS requires you to begin withdrawing a certain amount from tax-advantaged accounts like traditional IRAs and 401(k)s at age 73, or 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. Depending on the total balance in your retirement accounts, the required minimum distribution (RMD) could be sizable and push you into a higher tax bracket or raise your Medicare premiums.
However, couples with an age gap of 10 years or more can get special relief. As long as your spouse is the sole beneficiary named on the account, you can use an alternative RMD calculation table that permits smaller withdrawals, allowing more of your funds to continue growing and to pass to your spouse when you die.
For instance, a 73-year-old with tax-deferred account balances of $1 million and a spouse of the same age would need to withdraw at least $37,736 in 2026, but one married to a 59-year-old could take out just $34,014.
Be sure to notify your account custodian if you qualify for this RMD break, as they may be unaware of your marital age difference, says Jim White, founder of Great Oak Wealth Management in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
Diversify your retirement accounts
Retirement typically means absorbing an income hit, but that can make it a good time to move some of your savings out of pretax accounts like a traditional IRA or 401(k) into a Roth IRA. Although you’ll need to pay taxes on the amount you convert, money transferred to a Roth IRA won’t affect your RMD calculations and can be withdrawn tax-free.
“Any decrease in income gives you a nice window to do a Roth conversion because you were already used to earning a certain income and paying taxes on it,” says Kris Etter, founder of Houston’s Beacon Financial Planners. “If you’re earning $50,000 less this year, you can convert $50,000 without affecting your overall tax bracket. You just need to have the cash on hand to pay the taxes on the conversion.”
Roth conversions can also help May-December couples avoid the “widow’s trap,” where a surviving spouse faces higher tax rates and reduced standard deductions as a single filer, often despite experiencing a reduction in household income after the death of their partner.
Weigh your health insurance options
You need to sign up for Medicare during your seven-month initial enrollment period (IEP), which starts three months before the month you turn 65 and ends three months after your birthday month. (For example, if your 65th birthday is in June, your IEP begins March 1 and ends Sept. 30.)
One exception is if you have health insurance through your job or your spouse’s job. This means retirees with younger working spouses can join their partner’s plan and delay enrolling in Medicare.
For younger spouses with good employer-provided health insurance, the cost of adding their partner might be cheaper than the older spouse’s Medicare Part B premiums, says Eric Ritossa, a senior financial consultant at Charles Schwab.
High-income couples in particular might prefer the arrangement to avoid paying Medicare’s income-related monthly adjustment amount (IRMAA), a surcharge that raises monthly Part B and Part D premiums by as much as $6,936 a year in 2026 for those whose income exceeds certain limits.
Plan for long-term care
About 4 in 5 adults 65 and older will need long-term care at some point, according to a 2025 study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. While your spouse might be able to provide some of that support, professional services, when required, can quickly drain your nest egg.
In 2025, the national median cost of 44 hours per week of nonmedical home care topped $80,000 annually, and a private room at a nursing home ran $129,575, according to CareScout’s Cost of Care Survey.
Without a plan in place for how to cover potential long-term care expenses, your younger spouse could be left with fewer assets or savings to live on for their retirement.
Purchasing long-term care insurance that helps cover home health services, adult day care or a move into assisted living or a nursing home is one way to avoid such a predicament. But premiums can be steep — the average premium for a policy that provides $165,000 in coverage for a 65-year-old was $1,750 in 2025, according to data from the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. Also, qualifying for coverage can be tricky, as many insurers reject older applicants or those with certain health conditions.
Other couples might prefer to set aside funds for long-term care expenses in a designated investment account. Or they may review their assets to determine which stocks or property they’d sell first to cover care costs.
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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