Every decade of financial life has its own leverage, and the 60s are when the biggest retirement levers are still within reach — but not for long. Claiming decisions lock in, tax windows close, and the cost of healthcare starts making its own plans for your savings. None of the five moves below requires wealth or exotic products. They require timing, which is exactly what this decade offers and the next one takes away. Our business and finance coverage returns to this checklist often, because the readers who act on it earliest consistently report the same reaction: they wish someone had laid it out sooner.
1. Treat Social Security as a Decision, Not a Date
Claiming at 62 is permanent and reduced; waiting until 70 grows the benefit by roughly 8 per cent for each year of delay. The right answer depends on health, household earnings and other income — a couple can often do best when the higher earner delays while the other claims earlier — but it should be an answer, not a default. Run your own record through the Social Security Administration’s estimators before deciding, and remember the benefit is one of the few inflation-indexed, tax-advantaged income streams you will ever own.
2. Use the Low-Income Window for Roth Conversions
Between retirement and the start of required minimum distributions, many households pass through a few years of unusually low taxable income. Converting traditional IRA money to a Roth in those years — paying tax at today’s lower bracket to escape tomorrow’s higher one — is one of the few legal, repeatable tax arbitrages left. The Investor.gov resources explain the mechanics; the strategy is to fill your current bracket deliberately rather than drift over a threshold accidentally.
3. Max Catch-Up Savings and Consolidate Old Accounts
Workers over 60 get enlarged catch-up contribution room, and the final working years are when it matters most — every pre-tax dollar sheltered now compounds against a retirement that may last thirty years. This is also the decade to consolidate: old 401(k)s scattered across former employers create blind spots, missed beneficiaries and forgotten fees. One dashboard, one allocation, one beneficiary list.
4. Price Healthcare Before It Prices You
The gap between stopping work and Medicare at 65 surprises more retirees than any market crash: bridge coverage, COBRA or marketplace plans belong in the budget explicitly. After 65, the choices between traditional Medicare plus supplements and Medicare Advantage deserve a spreadsheet, not a coin flip — networks, drug formularies and out-of-pocket maximums differ in ways that matter precisely when health stops being theoretical.
5. Finish the Estate Basics
The Thread Connecting All Five
Look at the five moves together and a pattern emerges: almost none of them is about picking investments. The claiming decision, the conversion window, the consolidation, the healthcare bridge and the estate paperwork are all structural — choices about how money is organised, taxed and protected rather than what it is invested in. That is not an accident. By your 60s, the compounding from asset allocation has largely done what it will do; the remaining gains sit in the plumbing, where a percentage point saved in tax or a benefit claimed at the right age is worth more than a percentage point chased in markets. It is also why this decade rewards advice over instinct: the windows are calendar-driven, several are irreversible, and the cost of missing one is paid quietly, every year, for the rest of a retirement.
A will, powers of attorney, healthcare directives and — above all — beneficiary designations that match the will: unglamorous paperwork that decides whether your 60s planning survives contact with reality. Review them after every family change. The five moves share one theme: the 60s reward people who decide on purpose. More personal-finance explainers are on our homepage.
