Early Retirement - Financial Freedom (Investing, Tax Planning, Retirement Strategy, Personal Finance)

10 Questions To Ask Your Spouse So They Are Excited For Retirement

• Ari Taublieb, CFP®, MBA • Episode 275

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Struggling to get your spouse involved in retirement planning?

You are not alone. Many financially-minded partners lose their spouse’s attention by jumping straight into 401(k) allocations or tax strategies. The result is glazed eyes and little engagement.

This approach works differently. Start with powerful, open-ended questions that spark curiosity and connection. Ask things like “What does your perfect retirement day look like?” or “If we had to spend $150,000 this year, how would you want to use it?” These prompts bypass resistance and lead to meaningful conversations about dreams, priorities, and lifestyle.

When you know whether your partner envisions constant travel or staying close to home, or whether they fear losing purpose more than running out of money, you can build a plan you both believe in. Lifestyle clarity comes first. The numbers follow naturally.

Retirement planning is not just about financial optimization. It is about creating a shared vision for the years ahead with the person who matters most. 

Try these questions with your partner and watch the conversation shift from spreadsheets to shared dreams.

Visit earlyretirementpodcast.com to share your results or explore tools for building a plan that works for both of you.

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Advisory services are offered through Root Financial Partners, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Viewing this content does not create an advisory relationship. We do not provide tax preparation or legal services. Always consult an investment, tax or legal professional regarding your specific situation.

The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.

Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsements

Participation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.

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Ari Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA is the Chief Growth Officer of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients retire early with confidence.


Speaker 0:

I'm going to take a wild guess and assume you like financial planning more than your partner or spouse. Now, I'm only making that guess because I feel like I know many of you very well at this point, especially if you've been tuning into the show for a long time or you're watching on YouTube leaving comments you'll personally share. Hey, I love this stuff. I want my spouse to be equally excited, but I'm the one that's just been running it and at this point I feel like I know better. And getting them involved is more of a hassle, because when I do, they're like hey, I trust you, you can go ahead and handle it. But at the same time, maybe you feel it would be nice if they showed more interest, because then we can make more decisions, since technically it is our retirement and so we here at root financial, we have a lot of fun questions that we will ask spouses to get them more interested and involved in finances. I'll tell one of them to you right now because it's a very funny one. But and this was brought up by our founder, james Canole but he will say hey, spouse, if we forced you to spend $150,000 in retirement and you didn't spend it, meaning pretend you said I just couldn't. 150,000. If you told me I had to, I just I couldn't figure out a way. And let me preface that by saying some of you are like look my spouse, if you told them that they would find a way to spend it, no problem, which I recognize, okay. But in this example we were talking to a couple that were naturally frugal people and they said 150,000. Like I just we couldn't spend that if we tried. And James said well, if you don't, we're not going to let you save it. It doesn't just get rolled over and you can use it next year. It's being sent to your least favorite political party and that will get people talking Okay. So I'm bringing this up because there are questions that can make someone who traditionally might go well, I'm not as interested in finances start to open up and go to be honest. We would do more charitable giving and we would actually help our grandchildren, or we would help a child with a down payment, or we would actually buy nicer cars. We just didn't know we had the means to do so. Now, not an exactly relevant example, because many of you are in the position where you're like, look, my spouse could do that, no problem. I'm the one that's often saying, hey, we can't do these things and I'm tired of being the bad guy. So every situation is different. Bad guy, bad gal, you guys know what I mean. What I wanna go through today are what are some questions that are gonna help you connect more with your spouse, but, more than that, get them interested and willing to have these conversations and I personally am going through this.

Speaker 0:

My fiance, she does not. I mean you could. You could imagine she's hearing me talk about Roth conversions and estate planning and tax strategy. I manage my parents' finances. It's on all the time. So she's like, can we just turn off? But at the same time, I recognize I have blind spots. I'm doing this all day, every day.

Speaker 0:

So there are certain things that she goes, ari, you'll just say, like we need to max out our 401k and do a Roth IRA and make sure we convert and let's also do the backdoor conversion, and like I trust you because this is what you do. But I also just I think I'll be kind of lost if you're not here. So, like she's very great to say, hey, can you share with me why we're doing what we're doing? She also knows, because I grew up in a household that was my parents were awesome at making money, but not great at saving and investing that. I go too hard on that side and I will often not spend enough money because I want to make sure we're saving enough for our own personal retirement, because my parents are working in their 70s. Even if it was up to them, luckily, they like what they do, but if it was truly up to them, they would not be working to the same degree. So that's why this is so important to me, and what I see so many people do wrong is they'll go come on, honey, we're going to talk about our 401k contributions and you got to believe me. Look at this great 401k fund lineup and can you believe there's only target date fund options. And why won't they let us? You know, make this way more diversified. That's not going to light them up. That's going to put them to sleep faster than any of my conversion podcasts. So what I'd rather have you do is get them excited and actually starting with the dreaming, and this is how we'll encourage clients to do this the same thing.

Speaker 0:

So I'm going to walk through the framework today. My name is Ari Taubli. I'm a certified financial planner, host of the Early Retirement Podcast, which is this podcast which is available on all the platforms Apple Music, spotify, youtube, wherever you listen and then, of course, you can watch these on YouTube as well. Now I'm going to go through this framework, but please know, everything we do here is so that we can help you optimize what you've worked so hard for, which is all the saving and investing, so you can spend your time in retirement on what matters most, with who matters most. So let's go through 10 questions and give you some insight here.

Speaker 0:

Number one is what does a perfect day in retirement look like to you? Now, that's a weird question for me to ask my fiance because we're so far away from retirement, but I will still ask what does a perfect day look like to you? And she will go on and Alice will say at this time, by the time this episode comes out, my fiance will probably now be my wife, which still feels wild, to say Exciting wild and Alice would say you know, I'd love to wake up late, I'd love to read. She's a big reader, she was a history major at UCLA and she would probably say she would like to go on a walk, get a great brunch, then take a nap, maybe we do a yoga, watch a movie and go to bed. That's probably her ideal day.

Speaker 0:

My ideal day is I'm waking up at 6 am, I'm working out, then I'm going to go play soccer, then I'm going to have lunch with her and maybe some of my family, then we're going to watch a movie. Maybe we'll take a nap, but probably skip it. If we're talking about my perfect day here, then I would probably want to play another game of soccer at night, because I'm obsessed with it. Then I would love a good show and then amazing dinner and go to bed. So yeah, there's some differences there, obviously, but the reason I bring it up is you might find that your spouse, who you've never directly asked, goes my ideal retirement is sitting on the couch and you might go. I want to travel like crazy. Okay, great. That has nothing to do with 401ks or HSAs or ESPPs. You're just getting straight into what does ideal retirement look like, and I'd rather you start there. What does ideal retirement look like, and I'd rather you start there? It also moves from fear of nothing to do to excitement, which for some people, is very real.

Speaker 0:

I don't know how any of you feel exactly, but most of you fall in one of two buckets. I've been working the last 30, 40 years at this current role and I just can't even imagine what I'm gonna do when I'm gone. My identity is this role. I have my coworkers that I don't hang out with outside of work, but when I am with them it's amazing. And we do hang out, although rarely, and the idea of me not coming back to work just feels weird. Other people, others of you, are like I don't even know what you just said, like that was just total Portuguese. If you told me I did not have to work again, I'm out of here. These people, they can go figure out their own lives. I'm on my own, so it totally depends.

Speaker 0:

But I would start with asking a perfect day From there. I would ask where do you dream living, of living or spending extended time? I like this question because it will get sometimes a very simple answer. And I've had a client say this question to their spouse and they're like what do you mean? Like we're going to live in our home the rest of our lives, where we have been the last 30 years with our family, and he was like, oh, I was expecting to downsize and she was like, yeah, I originally maybe thought that, but, to be honest, emotionally I can't do it. Okay, well, let's talk about financially if we're still in a great spot to do so. That is a way better way than saying I want to downsize. I know you, emotionally, are still attached to this home, even if our kids aren't here, so could you just get rid of that already and, trust me, let's get it Like that's not going to be effective. So, asking about dreamings, that's the way that you really get people interested in finances.

Speaker 0:

I will go to my fiance at the time of this recording and I will say how much would you love to spend on going out to eat? And we are foodies, so we do go out to eat. But if we go out once a week and we spend 150 bucks or 600 bucks a month, to me that's awesome, like I've that's. That gets my itch. It's a new meal, it's fun, it's different. We live in LA, we might be closer to the suburbs in the future, so it's something I like doing.

Speaker 0:

She might say you know, I'd really love to go out twice a week. Now I know her, so she's not going to say that, but she's actually the type of person to go. Look, I just feel like we can make it better at home. And maybe, if it's not better, I don't want to be upset that we go out to eat and we spend $150 when we could have made it a home for less and it would have been better. And the satisfaction she gets from a great meal does not equal the satisfaction of the terrible meal. So the point here is I forget the study that was done, maybe it was in Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman but they talk about how the joy you get from winning is so much less than the sadness from losing Meaning. When you lose money you're twice as sad as when you make money. So all this to say, I want to make sure if we're dreaming properly, we're being realistic here. So that's number two. Number three so once again I'm at no financial questions so far. I'm going to go through these next seven quickly, just because of time here.

Speaker 0:

But this next one is what hobbies or activities have you always wanted to try? The framing of that's important, not what do you want to do in retirement? What hobbies or activities have you always wanted to try? Get an answer out of them and don't let them off the hook, don't cheat them. In the same way, I don't let you guys cheat and say, yeah, I'm not going to retire early because of healthcare. I will call you out on that and I will say, guys, it can be a big expense. I have clients spending 1500 bucks a month I guess what. I have other clients that spend $50 a month because they're optimizing their healthcare subsidies and they have a $3 million portfolio. They're just being really smart with how they're pulling income. So they're getting a great subsidy.

Speaker 0:

And healthcare is not the reason to not retire early. It's a factor, it's a consideration. And I'm saying that because if a client tells me, hey, I wanna retire early, that's my goal, and then they follow that up by saying, by the way, I'm worried about healthcare If I just let them off the hook and go, okay, worried about healthcare. If I just let them off the hook and go, okay, let's talk about healthcare, I'm not doing right by them. So I promise I'm very transparent because you deserve it. Okay, from there, what are some fun answers? I've heard, I've heard watercolor painting. I've heard woodworking, travel photography. Those are some fun ones. Okay, this is a good one.

Speaker 0:

Who do you want to spend more time with in retirement? They might just say you, I want more time with you, and so what's taking away time from you? Well, what if you're rebalancing your portfolio? What if you're always having to deal with the rental properties? What if it turns out you're spending so much time reading new tax laws that your spouse is like, hey, can we just get more time together? Like you just worked a job for 30, 40 years. Now you're retired. I want to redate you it's been 30 years, but now you're doing all this financial stuff. So, quite honestly, a large reason people pay us is that they can spend their time on what matters most. That's number four.

Speaker 0:

Number five what worries you about retirement? You see how all of this is making a much deeper conversation than tell me about. You know, come here, spouse. You see we're on track. Here's the Monte Carlo simulation. Like that is not effective.

Speaker 0:

So what worries you most about retirement? Is it healthcare? Is it boredom? Is it loneliness? How can you listen without fixing? I personally have that issue. I can tell you that right off the bat. Whenever my fiance is telling me about their issue, I'm always like, okay, here's 12 different ways we can fix it and she's like I just want you to listen. Number six what work or purpose will you miss and how can we replace it?

Speaker 0:

Many non-financial spouses, which I'm just calling them in this example. Their fear is losing purpose, not just finances. Number seven is how much structure do you want in your days? Some love flexibility, others need routine. Number eight is what do you not want in retirement? A fun reversal to identify the deal breakers here Clear conflicts early. So constant travel versus staying home. It helps you avoid spending on things you just don't value. Number nine what traditions or seasonal activities do you want to keep or start? Summer beach trips, snow travel it makes retirement feel more vibrant from my clients. And then number 10, if money were no object, what would you do in retirement? Removes the scarcity mindset. You can really get close. You both get to share. This is how I would bring your spouse into the financial conversation. So hopefully these resonated with you. If they did, I encourage you to like this video. If you're watching on YouTube, please comment below if it was helpful.

Speaker 0:

If you're listening on the podcast app and you do ask these questions, please send me a note. My email is ari at rootfinancialcom. I love reading your messages. They really make me excited, more motivated to record better content for you all. So thank you, as always, for tuning in and see you guys next time.

Speaker 0:

Thank you all, as always, for listening to the Early Retirement Podcast. I love getting to host these shows and make different content for you guys every single week. I've not missed a single week in years and that is because I love getting to do this. Now, please be smart about this. Before you actually execute any strategy that you see me talk about or hear me talk about, should I say Please talk to your financial advisor, your tax preparer, your estate attorney. Please be smart about this. None of this should be construed as financial advice. This is for fun, educational, informational purposes only. Once again, just quick disclaimer here. Guys, please be smart about this. Appreciate you listening, as always, and you can, of course, submit a question on my website, earlyretirementpodcastcom, if you of course, want me to address a specific case study or topic. I will not promise I can get to it, but I respond to every single person and if I find it will be helpful for a lot of people, I will absolutely make an episode on it, at the very least give you some insight, that's it, thanks guys.