Like many couples in their 50s, Wanda and Donald McCoy worry about retirement. Both plan to work until age 70, but his job as a truck driver can be demanding. And, as a breast cancer survivor, she knows health care surprises happen all the time.

They are both 54 and in line for a retirement with guaranteed pensions that rise with inflation, along with Social Security. Wanda McCoy, who works as an instructor in the math department for a state university, just received a promotion to assistant professor, which will bump her pay and give her health insurance now and in retirement.

Her new pension will add a guaranteed $15,000 annually to another pension from a previous employer and Social Security, giving her solid retirement income.

That's about where the good news ends.

They have less than two weeks' worth of expenses in their short-term savings accounts, and their longer-term savings are invested in a few single stocks and an annuity that charges them 2.45 percent a year.

Married for nearly six years, the Baltimore couple has been keeping their money separate and splitting up bills, but when Ben Jennings, a certified financial planner with Navigator Financial Planning in Lakewood, Wash., had the couple tally their expenses, they couldn't account for more than $6,000 a year in spending.

A high priority is going to be to track their expenses, Jennings said.

With her new salary of about $4,000 more per year, added to the just over $3,000 in surplus income they have each year at their current salaries, they have an opportunity to pay off credit card and mortgage debt while starting to save.

They are losing money on a rental property that she owns from before their marriage, and they owe nearly $7,000 in credit card debt accrued largely from her return to school for her advanced First, they need to change their taxable savings account, he said. They should sell the more than $20,000 they have in the stocks of Allstate Corp. and Morgan Stanley, and the annuity worth $8,701 (there will be a surrender charge of about $450).

With the proceeds from those sales, he suggested putting $10,000 into a high-yielding money market account, which will boost their emergency savings from two weeks' worth of expenses to more than two months' expenses without taxes.

The remainder should go into Roth individual retirement accounts, Jennings said.

He suggested investing the Roth IRA money in a single mutual fund that is diversified across several asset classes.

Reviewing the homeowner's policies on their residence, a Baltimore rowhouse worth about $110,000, and their rental, a detached single-family home worth about the same, Jennings found they were underinsured.

Doing a little comparison shopping with Jennings' help, Wanda found two new policies with much higher replacement cost limits and better liability protection on the residence. Total premiums for both policies are $405 per year lower.

Jennings suggested the couple boost their credit card payments to $500 per month from $300.

"As each debt is paid off, direct the monthly payment now freed up as an additional payment toward the remaining debt with the highest interest rate," he said.

Once the cards are paid off, the payment is added to the mortgage payment. "This will pay off the consumer debt by October 2013, and the mortgage also just 10 years later," he said.

That means their debt will be paid off by retirement. With Jennings' strategy, they'll save $50,000 in interest.

Janet Kidd Stewart writes for Tribune Media Services.