Spouse and I completely differ re: retirement plans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can always start living the life -you- want when retirement comes. You do have to be able to finance your vision on 1/2 the assets. The other spouse often "comes around". When the time comes, do it. You aren't helped by endlessly talking about it. That will just mean years of disagreement and debate. It doesn't result in a better plan. Not unless the change can happen in the very near future - like 6month. If, when the time comes, you know what you want, act to put it in place.

OP here. No problem financing vision on 1/2 assets. Big problem doing so without divorce. I can see spouse digging in financially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you living for a month near your family might be ok for your marriage. A month every so often. Husband visits for part of the time. There will be a zillion ways for this to work. Don't argue about it now.

I want to be up there April through Oct. A month is not enough.

[Anonymous]

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good

[Anonymous]

My DH and I are retired but have a child in middle school so we basically live around the kid’s school schedule. We live in DC but he goes to a private school in New England and we bought a house near the school. DS can board at school but he doesn’t want to which is fine.

I want to live in CA near my brother but my DH refuses to live in CA so we compromise by staying with my brother in their guest house for a few weeks every summer.

We agree that eventually we’ll move back to Manhattan. Hopefully DS will go to college there. I will worry about our geographic differences when DS is grown and not now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, thank you for posting this!

We've been married for 21 years and the last kid will be out in 2.5 years. My DH wants to retire in 4 years. We live in Los Angeles.

DH is from Virginia. I'm from a beach town in California and I always thought we would move there. Every time we'd visit that town, we'd look at houses and nothing was right.

About five years ago, when I showed him something I thought was awesome, and he didn't like it, and suddenly I realized that the reason we never make progress with discussing the future is that our visions really don't have an intersection in the Venn diagram. Not only in imagining our style of house, but our idea of retirement home etc.

Then this fall, he suddenly went on a tear about how due to years of mismanagement, California is becoming a pit, and it's ridiculously expensive etc etc....and no way in hell would he be retiring in CA and he's thinking Florida or South Carolina, blah blah...

And I was thinking, "WTF?" and also, "is there any WE in this discussion?"

So suddenly the Venn diagram circles got really far apart!

I'm totally ignoring all this. I just can't deal with this on top of some of the stressors that come with teenagers. I'll just worry about it after the kids are out. I figure we'll both be a little more relaxed and maybe there will be a way to figure it out that we haven't thought of yet (other than divorce or death, ha ha!)

He is wrong not to talk it through. He is right on California though. You just can't see it due to your memories of what it was to you. Now if you have 20-40 million, I think you can recreate the California of your youth in Malibu or La Jolla or SB.

Top PP here. Yes, you are right that HE is right about my state falling apart. I'm not that religious, but I do think about the Adam and Eve story often these days, as the idea that humans just can't live in paradise; they have to muck it up.