Turning 50? 6 Financial Moves to Consider

Your 50s are a good time to take a closer look at retirement savings, healthcare, debt, and how long you want to keep working.

Retirement may still be years away when you turn 50. Your career may be going strong, too.

At the same time, you could be paying college tuition, helping aging parents, carrying a mortgage, or starting to wonder how many more years you actually want to work.

There’s a lot going on financially at 50.

Here are six places to start.

1. Take advantage of catch-up contributions

Beginning in the year you turn 50, you may have more room to save for retirement through catch-up contributions.

The IRS allows people 50 and older to make catch-up contributions to workplace retirement plans such as 401(k), 403(b), and governmental 457(b) plans. IRAs have a catch-up contribution as well.

That extra room can be especially useful if retirement savings took a back seat earlier in life. Maybe you were raising kids, buying a house, paying off debt, or simply earning less than you do today.

You don’t have to max out your accounts for an increase to matter. Look at what you’re contributing now. If a raise, bonus, or recently paid-off loan has freed up some money, you may be able to send more of it toward retirement.

2. Look at the healthcare gap before Medicare

Planning to work until 65 or beyond? You may be able to keep employer-sponsored health insurance until Medicare begins.

Retiring earlier changes the math.

You’ll need to know where coverage could come from and what it might cost. That could mean a spouse’s plan, retiree coverage, COBRA, or an individual plan through the Health Insurance Marketplace. Depending on when you hope to leave work, you could be paying for that coverage for several years.

That cost belongs in your retirement calculation now, not after you’ve picked a date.

And if you have a health savings account (HSA), take another look at it. Money saved there today could help cover qualified healthcare expenses later.

3. Take a closer look at your debt

You don’t have to enter retirement debt-free.

But think about what happens when the paycheck stops and the payments don’t.

A mortgage, car loan, credit card balance, or other debt becomes part of the monthly income your retirement savings need to replace. So start with the numbers: what you owe, what each debt costs you, and when it’s scheduled to disappear.

Some decisions may be straightforward. High-interest debt, for example, can be an obvious place to focus. Others require more thought. Paying off a low-rate mortgage early may feel good, but that doesn’t automatically make it the best use of your money.

The question is simpler: What do you still want to be paying for when you retire?

4. Give retirement a rough timeline

You don’t need to circle a retirement date on the calendar.

Pick a few.

Run the numbers at 60, 65, and 67, or whatever ages make sense for you. A difference of just a few years can mean more time to save, a different Social Security strategy, fewer years your portfolio needs to support you, and potentially a very different healthcare picture.

You might find that your preferred timeline works.

If it doesn’t, that’s useful information, too. At 50, you still have time to do something with it.

5. Start the long-term care conversation

Long-term care can feel far away at 50. That’s partly why this can be a good time to talk about it.

You’re planning before there’s a need.

There isn’t one answer for how to pay for future care. Some people buy long-term care insurance or hybrid policies. Some plan to use savings and other assets. For many families, the eventual solution involves more than one source.

But the financial piece is only part of the conversation.

If you needed help someday, where would you want to live? Would staying at home matter to you? Who might help with your care, and what would that ask of them? If you have a spouse or partner, what would a major care expense mean for the money they still need?

Those aren’t easy questions. They’re easier to talk about before anyone has to answer them.

6. Decide what you want from the rest of your career

Retirement planning tends to focus on the finish line: When can I stop working?

At 50, there may be another question worth asking.

What do I want work to look like between now and then?

Maybe the answer is exactly what you’re doing today. But it could also be fewer hours, a different role, consulting, a second career, or work you’d be happy doing longer because it asks less of you.

The financial impact can be significant. Working even a few more years gives you more time to save and can shorten the period your portfolio needs to support you. Leaving a full-time job earlier may mean replacing income and health insurance sooner.

Your plan should account for those possibilities. Retirement doesn’t have to be a switch that flips from full-time work to no work at all.

50 is a good time to check in

You don’t need to hit 50 with retirement figured out.

What you do have is time.

Time to save more if you need to. Time to rethink debt. Time to see what retiring a few years earlier, or later, would actually mean. And time to make decisions about work, healthcare, and future care before those decisions are right in front of you.

You may not change anything after reviewing your plan.

Or you may find one move worth making now.

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summary

Turning 50 comes with a few financial changes, including the ability to make catch-up contributions to retirement accounts. It’s also a good time to look at the bigger picture: what you owe, when you might retire, how you’ll cover healthcare, and what you want the next phase of your career to look like.