Every retirement plan ever built assumes two people make it to the finish line.
Two Social Security checks. Two life expectancies. One household budget. The spreadsheet runs to age 92 with both names on it, and nobody ever builds the version where one name disappears at 58.
Then it happens.
And within about three weeks, a person who is not sleeping and cannot concentrate is asked to make a series of permanent financial decisions, several of which have deadlines.
That is the actual problem here. Not that the money situation is always catastrophic, because frequently it is not. The problem is that the timing is brutal. The decisions arrive at the exact moment you are least equipped to make them.
So this article is organized around that. What you must do quickly, what looks urgent but is not, and what genuinely changes about the retirement you were planning.
If you are reading this in the first month, skip to the checklist. Come back for the rest later.