- Around a third of couples – 31.1% of married couples and 33.7% of cohabiting couples – have an age gap of five years or more*
- The state pension age is currently rising, from 66 in April 2026 to 67 by April 2028, potentially exacerbating financial issues in age gap relationships during retirement
- Problems can emerge if one of you retires first but there can also be issues if you both stop work together
- It’s also worth considering how to prepare your finances for having children later, needing care and even on death
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at AJ Bell, comments:
“Age is just a number, but as that number gets bigger, if there’s a big age gap between a couple, it can cause financial headaches. It means you need to be aware of the risks, so you can plan ahead and protect yourself from the pitfalls.
- Budgeting when one of you retires first
“With a significant age gap, one of the couple could reach state pension age while the other is in their 50s. They might even start to scale back at work while their partner is in their 40s and at their peak earning potential. This raises questions about how you split your living costs when your incomes are so different. This can be particularly thorny if the older person has tended to earn more in the past and carried more of the share of costs, and you both need to adjust to the change.
“If you have planned for this in advance, the younger person will always have known a time would come when they took over more of the costs, and they could have budgeted for it. If you don’t have this conversation, it could come as a nasty surprise.
- Making ends meet if you retire together
“With a big age gap, if you retire together, it either means one of you working far longer than they may have originally intended, or the other taking very early retirement. If you opt to finish work early, you need to be certain you can afford it. You’ll also have to factor in retirement for a significant period without a state pension – especially as the state pension age rises. Someone turning 67 in 2028, with a partner ten years older, might have a gap of 12 years between when they both received their state pension due to the increase in the state pension age.
“In some cases, couples will retire together, on the understanding that the pension of the older person will produce most of their income. This raises other issues around how you manage this money between you, and how much control you both have on spending decisions.
- Covering the cost of children in retirement
“In 2025, there were 1,126 babies born with a father over the age of 60 – this is up a fifth since 2023**. It means there are thousands of people entering retirement with children still in primary school. This can be enormously helpful if you can pick up the childcare and cut your outgoings. However, you need to have planned carefully for how you can afford to bring them up on a pension income – possibly paying for university and helping them onto the property ladder too.
“You may also want to consider life insurance – not just for the older person but for the younger half of the couple. If they were to pass away while the child is still dependent, the older person will have to support them on a pension income. If you are in your 70s when you suddenly become a single parent, you may also need support – which can come with a price tag.
- Care costs for the older person
“If the older person needs care, this doesn’t come cheap. If they need to go into residential care, then the fact their partner is likely to be living in the property means it won’t be counted as an asset when your wealth is assessed to see if you qualify for state support. However, their savings and investments will, including half of any assets you hold jointly. It means you may end up spending money you might have assumed the younger person would be able to call on in later life.
“This can be a problem, regardless of whether you have an age gap or not, but those who have a long retirement ahead of them will face more consequences if all the couple’s savings are spent on care.
“If you hold the money in joint accounts, it can be particularly painful, because half of everything in these accounts will be counted as belonging to them. If you take a couple with joint savings of £80,000, who spend £20,000 on care and are left with joint assets of £60,000. At this point their half will still be above the means test threshold of £23,250, so they still need to pay for all their care. If you had held the money in separate accounts, you might have £40,000, so if they spent £20,000 of their money on care, it would bring them down below the threshold and they would get some state help with the costs.
“It means you need to consider how you hold assets. You can’t just give them away to your spouse before the means test, because the council will consider this to be a deliberate move to avoid care fees (known as deliberate deprivation of assets), and charge you regardless. However, it could have an impact on how you choose to hold savings and investments as a couple as you get older.
- Income collapse after the first death
“If the older member of the couple has a defined benefit pension, there will usually be spousal benefits, often paying half the pension to the surviving member of the couple. However, some scheme rules mean that if they were to remarry they would lose the benefit. If this is their main source of retirement income, this could leave them high and dry, so even if they are bereaved relatively young they can’t afford to get married again.
“Those who have a defined contribution pension and opt for an annuity have to decide whether they want it to pay out until their death (single life), or until they and their spouse have both died (joint life). This can be crucial for couples with age gaps and very uneven pension pots, who rely heavily on one pension. If the person with the bulk of the income takes out a single annuity and dies first, it can leave their spouse in dire straits.
“The fact that two thirds of policies taken out are single life means there could be a worrying number of people facing this risk. The Pensions Commission recently noted that those not adding cover for their spouse were likely to regret it. These individuals often said they were overwhelmed with how complicated the decision was, and that they had been swayed by the fact the single life annuity offered a higher annual income, without fully appreciating the longer-term implications.”
*Source: ONS data on living arrangements
**Source: ONS data on births in England and Wales
