5 Smart Financial Moves to Consider in Your 60s

Your 60s are the last decade in which big financial decisions are still reversible — and the first in which they start to become permanent. When you claim a pension, whether you downsize, and how you prepare for healthcare costs will shape your income for twenty or thirty years. The good news is that a handful of deliberate moves, made calmly rather than at the point of retirement, can add real security. Start with the headlines on our homepage, then work through the five moves below.

1. Time your pension claims deliberately

The single largest lever most people control is timing. Delaying a state or employer pension usually increases the eventual payment, while claiming early locks in a lower amount for life. The right answer depends on health, other income, a partner’s entitlements and how long you expect to draw the pension — which is precisely why it deserves a proper calculation rather than a default decision on a birthday. The Social Security Administration’s retirement guidance lays out how claiming age changes monthly benefits, and similar principles apply to pension systems elsewhere: run the break-even age before you sign anything.

2. Decide on downsizing while it is a choice

Housing is usually the biggest asset and the biggest cost. Moving to a smaller, cheaper-to-run home can release equity, cut bills and remove maintenance burdens — but moving in your early 60s, while you have energy and choice, is far easier than being forced into it later by health or bereavement. Be honest about the full costs of moving, and about whether the new area keeps you close to family, healthcare and the life you actually enjoy.

3. Budget for healthcare before it budgets for you

Health costs rise with age, and the expenses that catch retirees out are rarely the catastrophic ones — they are dental work, hearing aids, home help and the gap between what insurance covers and what care actually costs. Building a dedicated healthcare line into your retirement budget, and understanding exactly what your coverage includes, turns nasty surprises into planned spending. The investor education site Investor.gov offers free tools for retirement and healthcare cost planning that are worth an afternoon of anyone’s time.

4. Use the tax windows while you have them

The years between stopping work and drawing every pension can be unusually tax-efficient: income is lower, allowances may go partly unused, and spreading withdrawals across tax years can keep more money in your pocket. Equally, review where your savings sit — which accounts are taxed, which are sheltered — and in what order you will draw them down. Small sequencing decisions, repeated over decades, compound into large differences. A single session with a regulated adviser, reviewing a written plan, often pays for itself here.

Review the plan every year, not once

None of these moves is a one-off event. Tax rules change, markets move, health and family circumstances shift, and a plan written at sixty should be revisited at sixty-one and every year after. An annual review — an hour with your statements, your budget and your goals — catches small drifts before they become expensive problems, and it keeps partners and adult children informed while decisions are still easy to discuss calmly together as a family.

5. Rebuild the emergency fund for retired life

An emergency fund matters more, not less, after the salary stops: a failed boiler or a car repair cannot be absorbed by next month’s pay. Aim to hold one to two years of essential spending in accessible cash or near-cash, so that a market fall never forces you to sell investments at the worst moment. Then write the plan down — income sources, spending, insurance, wills and powers of attorney — and share it with the people who would need it. For more on protecting wealth once you have built it, see our report on the EY breach that exposed Goldman Sachs wealth clients. Your 60s reward those who decide early; these five moves are where to start.