Joint pension or two separate ?

Mick70

Most (not all) married couples will have separate pension pots / savings etc , although often one will have more than the other as main earner .
but when come to retire , how do most married couples organise it.

Do you think of it as one combined pot and savings or individually ?  As example mrs A May have 100k pot and 100k cash (too much cash ?) and Mr A May have 300k pot yet only 20k cash .
come retirement planning do you combine them ?

mick 

Flugelhorn

I suspect most people carry on as they did before retirement if if they threw everything into one pot then they do that or if they had separate accounts then that continues too

FWIW I paid for everything a the the sole earner for the last 15 years and now we have our pensions, we save all of DH's and I carry on paying for everything 

Pat38493

On other threads the general advice, all other things equal was that retirement should be planned on a joint level and not individually.

You cannot technically combine to pensions that belongs to different people, but you can certainly plan how to use them jointly.

There are all sorts of factors involved here e.g. if one earner is on higher rate tax before retirement, it may make complete sense to this pot to be maximised to take advantage of 40% tax relief.  However, when both are retired, ideally you want to be making use of both of your tax allowances, so I guess there is no one answer for everyone.

Linton

We have separate bank accounts.  Most house holdexpenses are paid out of my account for convenience and ease of tracking but Mrs L will transfer money over if needed.

We each have our own SIPP and S&S ISA. I manage all 4 investment accounts in parallel as a single set of cross-account pots.

OldMusicGuy

Joint. IMO everything must be planned for on a joint basis and you must make contingencies for when one of you dies. I have a large DC pot and my wife has none, just a couple of small DB pensions from when she worked. I have always worked on the basis my DC pot has to provide for both of us, and we pool all other pension income. 

We were relatively separate financially while I was working but when I retired we only have a joint bank account and other accounts (eg Ford Money). That way if I drop dead my wife has access to plenty of cash very easily without having to disentangle all my financial affairs. I've also simplified the way we hold our savings and investments so it's easy for her to manage if I peg it (she is not a pensions/spreadsheet nerd like me).

SouthCoastBoy

I can only answer from my perspective, my wife has a db pension no dc and full state pension. I have dc no db, so no pension planning for my wife, she will continue to just be "paid". I on the other hand will need to manage my pension. We will continue to use our joint account which currently I put in £2000 a mth and she puts in £600 a mth. I will continue my side of the bargain as will my wife, inflation adjusted. When wife reaches state pension age she will increase her share to around 1000 per mth in todays terms

Albermarle

Mick70 said:

Most (not all) married couples will have separate pension pots / savings etc , although often one will have more than the other as main earner .

Do you think of it as one combined pot and savings or individually ?  As example mrs A May have 100k pot and 100k cash (too much cash ?) and Mr A May have 300k pot yet only 20k cash .
come retirement planning do you combine them ?

mick 

Many couples hardly ever talk about money, let alone sit down and discuss a retirement strategy. Often one organises the finances and the other is only vaguely interested at best. In some cases neither is interested and they just blunder through ( or not)

but when come to retire , how do most married couples organise it.

So probably best to reword that question as ' how do married couples organise it, when one of them is interested enough in personal finance to regularly read and contribute to a pensions forum' 

Pat38493

Albermarle said:

Mick70 said:

Most (not all) married couples will have separate pension pots / savings etc , although often one will have more than the other as main earner .

Do you think of it as one combined pot and savings or individually ?  As example mrs A May have 100k pot and 100k cash (too much cash ?) and Mr A May have 300k pot yet only 20k cash .
come retirement planning do you combine them ?

mick 

Many couples hardly ever talk about money, let alone sit down and discuss a retirement strategy. Often one organises the finances and the other is only vaguely interested at best. In some cases neither is interested and they just blunder through ( or not)

but when come to retire , how do most married couples organise it.

So probably best to reword that question as ' how do married couples organise it, when one of them is interested enough in personal finance to regularly read and contribute to a pensions forum' 

LOL great point Albermarle