Does Your Retirement Plan Actually Cover Both of You?

The new Household Continuity summary shows exactly who your plan models, what happens to spending after a first death, and which facts are still missing.

There is an uncomfortable question hiding inside every couple's retirement plan: whose retirement is it modeling? For an embarrassingly long time, ours quietly modeled one person. The filing status said married, the accounts said two names, and the projections said — one life, one lifespan, one Social Security check. Nothing was lying to us. We had just never checked what was actually switched on.

The new Household continuity summary in the Plan Report exists so that check takes ten seconds instead of never happening.

Five facts, no guessing

The summary is deliberately boring — five lines, read-only, sitting with the rest of your plan's assumptions:

• Household scope — is a spouse saved at all?
• Members in the current model — is that spouse actually in the projections, or saved but inactive?
• Survivor spending policy — what percentage of spending continues after the first modeled death, and did you choose it or is it a default?
• Account planning-owner labels — how many accounts are labeled primary, spouse, or not labeled at all.
• Saved-data coverage — precisely which modeled fields are missing, by name.

The line that catches most couples is the second one. A spouse can be saved without being modeled — survivor modeling only runs when the spouse has an age on file, household modeling is switched on in Settings, and the filing status is married. Until all three are true, the summary says so plainly: "A spouse is saved but is not included in the current model." That one sentence is the difference between believing you have a joint plan and having one.

What it refuses to do

Just as important is what this summary will not do. It never infers a spouse — not from a married filing status, not from an account with a second name on it, not from the size of a balance. It reports what is saved, and only what is saved. And the owner labels come with a caveat we put right in the interface: they are planning labels for tax and survivor modeling, not proof of legal title, beneficiary designations, or account access. RetireOdds can tell you your model is complete; it cannot tell you your estate plan is. "Modeled fields present" means exactly that, and nothing more.

When we finally turned household modeling on for our own plan, the numbers moved — the horizon extended to the longer of our two lifespans, spending stepped down to our chosen percentage after the first death, and Social Security survivor mechanics kicked in. The plan got slightly less rosy and considerably more honest. That trade is the entire product philosophy in one sentence.

Key takeaways

• The Household Continuity summary shows who your plan actually models — which can differ from who is saved in your profile.
• Survivor modeling needs three switches: a spouse with an age, household modeling on, and married filing status.
• Coverage gaps are named specifically (a missing spouse retirement age, an unlabeled account) so you can fix them in minutes.
• Owner labels are planning inputs, not legal documents — the summary says so rather than letting you assume.

It lives in the Plan Report, flows into the printable report and the Claude export, and takes one glance on your next monthly close. Worth the glance.