Is it possible to live comfortably in retirement on Social Security income alone?
Yes and no.
Alden and Dena Swartz draw nearly $4,000 a month from Social Security, the government program designed to support Americans in retirement. And they are struggling.
Gail Randle and her partner, Mike DellaVolpe, collect only $2,400 a month in Social Security benefits: Not quite $30,000 a year. And they are doing all right.
“We are frugal people,” said Randle, 73. “Almost everything in our house is recycled. Used, you know? Thrifted. But it looks nice. Everything works.”
Social Security was never intended to fund the full cost of retirement. On average, the benefit covers about 40% of a worker's preretirement earnings. And that figure could drop: Social Security will face a shortfall by 2035, according to the Congressional Budget Office. President-elect Donald Trump proposes to eliminate taxes on Social Security, which could deplete the fund two years sooner.
Most Americans think you need at least $1 million in the bank, on top of Social Security, to live a comfortable retirement. Investment firms and news headlines reward that thinking: Plan to save 10 times your annual income before you retire, common wisdom suggests, if you want to keep the lifestyle you have now.
But here’s the problem: Most Americans don’t save nearly that much. In the 65-to-74 age group, the typical family with a retirement account has about $200,000 saved, according to the federal Survey of Consumer Finances. Only about half of those households have retirement accounts at all.
And here’s the question: How are those people doing?
Just fine, says Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. He penned an essay that went viral this year, arguing that you can retire with a lot less than $1 million in the bank: $50,000 to $100,000 in savings should do it, he said.
As evidence, Biggs points to another federal report, the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking. That survey asked retirement-age Americans, 65 to 74, how well they were managing financially. Roughly 85% said they were doing OK.
After they retire, “people spend dramatically less,” Biggs said. “This sort of rat race you get when you’re working, a lot of that drops off in retirement.”
To test that theory, USA TODAY reached out to retirees across the country who are living mostly on Social Security and asked how they were doing. We got help from the r/retirement community on Reddit, whose 83,000 members talk about this stuff all the time.
Here’s what they told us.
‘I have worked so hard all my life’
Gail Randle’s approach to retirement living has a lot to do with staying out of trouble.
“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, we don’t get arrested, we don’t go to jail,” she said. “We don’t start arguments with people.”
Randle had a long career in the Army and Army Reserve, working as a colonel’s clerk and as a general’s driver. She dabbled in property management and sometimes moonlighted as a cocktail waitress. For the final 16 years of full-time work, she owned a retail store. “Adult,” she clarified. “It was stripper clothes.”
She retired in 2016 at age 65. She felt that she deserved it.
“I have worked so hard all my life, working two jobs, sometimes three,” she said. “You throw in the Army Reserves. And it has really been a struggle.”
For all that work, Randle has only $2,000 in retirement savings. She has a modest annuity, about $500 a month, but it runs out in a couple of years.
And so, Randle and her partner, Mike DellaVolpe, 82, survive mostly on Social Security. Their combined benefit is about $2,400 a month.
The money goes farther than you might think.
In the years before retirement, Randle “put some things into effect that would make my life easier,” she recalled. “I said, OK, we’re going to need a newer car. We need to get our pool resurfaced.” Earlier this year, she paid off her $82,000 mortgage on her home in Clearwater, Florida.
She has two grown kids who support themselves. She and her partner enjoy keeping to a budget.
“We are both very frugal,” she said. “We look at those menus and we say, ‘They’re crazy. We are not going to pay that. I can do better at home.’”
In their last dinner out, Randle recalled recently, “I had a little pizza for $11, and my Mike had an Italian beef for $11.” Their bill was $23.
“We have a place we go for breakfast,” she said. “It’s owned by Greeks, so you know it’s good, and breakfast is $6.50.”
‘I was never going to get old’
Living on Social Security is one thing. Living well is quite another matter, as Alden and Dena Swartz have learned.
Alden Swartz had a good job at a corporation that sold packaging products, working on a team that sold the packaging machines: “Anything that had to do with making a bottle of ketchup and making it shippable,” he said, by way of example.
In 2019, the company reorganized, “and they organized me out of my position,” Swartz said. He retired at 64.
All seemed well. The Swartzes had well over $3,000 a month in Social Security benefits. And they lived in a veritable castle: A 4,800-square-foot, red brick Italianate masterpiece in Lafayette, Indiana, built in 1859. The couple had bought it in a down market and spent “a boatload of money” on renovations. Their monthly mortgage payment was $1,180.
Then, life happened. The Swartzes learned of the impending birth of their first grandchild. In South Korea.
Their daughter had married a South Korean man and relocated there. Not about to miss the blessed event, the Swartzes moved to South Korea in 2019, arriving in time for the birth.
Housing works differently in South Korea. The Swartzes were planning a lengthy stay, so they chose to rent an apartment. They had to place a $100,000 deposit on the rental, though the rent totaled only $900 a month. To raise the money, the Swartzes sold their dream home.
When the couple left South Korea, earlier this year, they got their deposit back – but it was $28,000 lighter because the dollar had strengthened against the South Korean won.
Upon their return to the United States, the Swartzes found that home prices had soared in Lafayette, and interest rates had doubled.
“And when you combine those things,” Swartz said, “there’s no way we can replace what we had when we left.”
The couple was forced to rent. They are paying $1,800 a month now for a smaller home in a less prosperous community.
“I’m not so worried about the downsizing as I am about the safety of the neighborhood,” Swartz said.
The couple sold all their furniture for the move, so they have furnished the rental with cheap buys from Facebook Marketplace. Almost everything is used.
Even so, the Swartzes’ financial situation feels precarious. They draw $3,890 a month from Social Security, along with $240 a month from two small pensions. Rent and monthly utilities total at least $2,200 a month: More than half of their income.
To get by, the couple had to draw on a small emergency savings fund. They both have IRAs, but they haven’t touched them, “because they’re small,” worth a combined $40,000, Alden Swartz said.
“We’re going to have to make a decision next spring about what we’re going to do, or I’m going to continue to pull down our savings,” he said. “And I don’t have any way of replacing that.”
Swartz said he may try to get a part-time job at Starbucks. He and his wife live frugally.
“We don’t eat out very often, which is OK because really I like our home cooking better,” he said. “Our travel is going to be limited to family events.” The couple journeyed to Europe and South America and cruised the South Seas in years past, but “those are no longer on the agenda.”
Swartz grew up on a farm, driving a tractor, so those deprivations are not particularly painful.
“I’ve had a wonderful life. I have a tremendous family,” he said.
He faults himself, though, for not building a larger retirement fund in his working years.
“There’s nobody really to blame for our current financial change other than me,” he said, “because I was never going to get old.”
‘There’s not a whole lot we need’
Fourteen years into their retirement, Suzanne and Susie Leedy can personally attest that it is possible to retire on Social Security.
Suzanne retired from her real estate job in 2010. Susie, a registered nurse, suffers from multiple sclerosis and has been on disability since 2008.
They had some savings, but neither partner had a retirement savings account. What they did have was a track record of work. Their combined Social Security checks total $4,500 a month.
“I feel very fortunate that our careers kept us at the higher end” of Social Security earnings, Suzanne Leedy said: The average benefit check is about $1,900.
When they retired, the Leedys lived in Alexandria, Virginia, an affluent, high-cost Washington, D.C., suburb.
“My mother was 92, and we knew we had to have her live with us, as she could not continue to live alone,” Suzanne Leedy said. “I was determined at that point to move out of Northern Virginia,” in search of a lower cost of living.
Suzanne’s parents had owned a timeshare in Massanutten, a resort near Shenandoah National Park. The couple decided to move there, and Suzanne's mother agreed to come with them.
Mom died just two months after the move, and Susie Leedy’s mother died a year after that. The partners inherited enough money to buy a home and settle in rural Virginia for good.
“As it worked out, it was exactly enough to buy the house,” Suzanne Leedy said. They bought it in cash.
The couple learned to live on their new budget.
“I think travel was the first thing to go,” Suzanne Leedy said. Susie was from England, and Suzanne had wanted her to see “as much of the United States as possible,” she said. “We took trips to the West Coast, Olympic National Park, that sort of thing.”
“We also sold our second car,” Leedy said. “We realized that if we went anywhere, we always went together.”
The couple used to eat out “maybe once a week,” she said. “But now we invite friends over for dinner, or we go to their house. I think we actually eat better, and it is a lot more fun.”
Money got tighter four years ago when Susie had a stroke. Now, the couple faces ongoing medical expenses. Still, they get by.
“At some point, you realize that, you know, I’m 79 years old,” Suzanne Leedy said. “There’s not a whole lot we need. We have a comfortable life. We have a lot of really good friends.”
‘I’ll never be out on the streets’
Sheri Makasini’s experience in retirement could provide a textbook case to illustrate that many Americans cannot survive on Social Security alone, not even in a trailer park.
Makasini, 68, owned a home in a Florida RV park. But with a monthly Social Security income of $1,800, she couldn’t afford to keep it. She was paying more than $800 in monthly rent on the land where the home sat, in addition to loan payments on the home itself.
She put the mobile home up for sale, and, between interviews with USA TODAY, she managed to sell it. She’ll clear about $12,000 after paying off the loan.
Makasini lives now with her daughter in Euless, Texas. Daughter Michelle Makasini makes a good living as a social media manager for the Hilton hotel chain.
“I’m lucky because she has that mentality, ‘Take care of your parents,’” Sheri Makasini said. “I’ll never be out on the streets.”
Makasini spent her career in the airline food concession industry. She started out at Air 1, one in a fleet of startup airlines that came and went in the years after the deregulation of the industry under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. She later worked for US Airways and American Airlines and other aviation firms.
A divorce in 2000 changed Makasini’s flight path. She raised her daughter without child support. Mergers and shutdowns in the volatile airline industry left her jobless at times, forcing her to spend all of her modest 401(k) retirement savings to survive.
In 2012, Michelle Makasini had a child, and Sheri struggled to support her daughter and grandson. At the time, Michelle was earning $11 an hour.
Sheri Makasini took Social Security at her earliest opportunity, at age 62.
“I didn’t have any other means of income,” she said. “If I would’ve waited, it would have been $2,100 or $2,200 when I turned 65 or 67. Now, I’m dealing with, like, $1,600 a month,” after Medicare deductions: “Not too much.”
Michelle Makasini has offered to build her mother an in-law suite on her property. But that may be years away. In the meantime, Sheri Makasini plans to relocate to Missouri to be near some of her siblings. She is on a waiting list for a subsidized apartment for seniors. Rent will be about $800 a month, roughly half of her Social Security income.
“It’s not optimal to just get by,” she said. “But that’s the way it is.”
‘I don’t eat out. I cook’
At age 64, Patricia Douglas has had a lot of practice living on Social Security and making ends meet.
Douglas was a medical analyst at a New Orleans hospital. At age 52, heart trouble forced her into early retirement. Her monthly benefit check started at around $900.
“It was rough when I first started,” she said. “The check was so low.”
Today, Douglas receives about $1,100 a month in Social Security disability income. Next year, when she turns 65, Douglas will reap her Social Security retirement benefit, along with most of the benefit that would have gone to her husband. He died in 2009.
She will feel wealthy then. How wealthy, she doesn’t know: Douglas says she hasn’t figured out how to navigate the Social Security website to review her benefits.
For now, she makes do.
It’s hard to fathom how Douglas manages to pay all of her bills when her $1,100 Social Security check has to cover her $1,000 mortgage. She is on food stamps. She volunteers for Catholic Charities six hours a day, and the nonprofit pays her a small stipend, around $100 a week plus expenses.
“For one thing, I look for everything that’s free,” she said. “If it’s not free, it’s damn near free.” Douglas pays only $10 a month for internet service through a Cox plan for low-income Americans. She has a Roku TV and streams “only the free stuff,” she said. Her one indulgence is Amazon Prime.
“I don’t eat out. I cook,” she said. “Since it’s just me, I’ve cut down on the portions. I can eat me a bowl of cereal and I’m good. I can eat me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I’m good.”
‘We made $150,000, we spent $150,000’
For Ken and Kathy Larson, a comfortable retirement has been all about downsizing.
The couple owned a home on the Fox River in Batavia, Illinois, outside Chicago. He was making $150,000 or more a year, depending on bonuses, from an information technology job with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The Larsons traveled a lot.
“We made $150,000, we spent $150,000,” Ken Larson said.
For years, Larson had a calendar page for June 2019 hanging above his desk, for laughs. That was the month he planned to retire, at age 65. On June 1, he jokingly wrote, “Company cancels pension.” On June 5, he wrote, “U.S. suspends Social Security.” June 10: Company fires Kayo. (That was his work nickname.) June 15: Kayo retires.
“It was funny as hell to everyone that walked by,” Larson said.
But as the dates approached, some of the jokey predictions started to come true. His company replaced its workplace pension with a 401(k). The Social Security retirement age ticked up. Social Security itself started to look shaky. Larson moved his planned retirement date to 2021.
The end of his career arrived in late 2020. The company decided to lay off someone on his team. Larson volunteered: He was less than a year from retirement anyway. Severance pay covered the gap from 2020 to 2021.
From that point on, the Larsons cut their spending in half.
They downsized from the big house on the river to a smaller one on one-third of an acre a few blocks away. “I couldn’t spend my retirement cutting two acres of grass all the time,” Larson said. Their annual property tax bill dropped from $14,000 to $6,000. They parted with one of the two family cars.
Ken Larson retired with full Social Security benefits, and Kathy receives half of her husband’s check as a spousal benefit. The Larsons live now on $5,400 in combined monthly Social Security benefits: Roughly $65,000 a year. They draw a few hundred dollars a month from other sources, including the old pension plan from Ken Larson’s employer.
The couple have about $800,000 in IRA savings and some other investments. They have made a few tentative withdrawals, but they aren’t really tapping it as income.
From now on, the Larsons plan to travel less.
“We just came back from Austin, Texas,” for the wedding of a niece, Ken Larson said. “We probably spent $1,500 doing that, and it was doable. We can budget that.”
‘I’m not struggling at all’
For someone who transitions from a high-income career into a modest retirement, a Social Security check can go a long way.
Jean Hullihan worked as an intelligence analyst for the federal government, earning a six-figure salary toward the end. She retired in 2023, at age 67, and started drawing a monthly Social Security benefit of $4,200.
That’s less than half of what Hullihan earned in her intelligence job. She assumed it would not be nearly enough to sustain her.
“From everything I read prior to retiring, I didn’t think it was possible,” she said.
Hullihan sold her Northern Virginia condo and bought a small house in Louisville, Kentucky, where two of her grown children live. On the day of her retirement, Hullihan climbed in her Honda CR-V and drove to her new home, eager to see how her retirement budget would play out.
When the first Social Security check arrived, Hullihan realized she was doing fine. Her monthly mortgage payments work out to $980: Less than one-quarter of her Social Security benefit. Utilities total another $100 or so.
“It’s been a year and a week, and I’m not struggling at all,” she said. “When I hear people say, ‘I can’t live on Social Security,’ it’s like, Why not?”
Hullihan made enough money on the sale of her condo that she expects to pay off her mortgage in Louisville in a few years.
She has a large retirement account, but she hasn’t touched it and doesn’t plan to. She is thinking of putting the money in a trust, so “Medicaid can’t take it.” The rules of Medicaid would require her to spend down her savings before she could reap the health insurance benefits.
Hullihan is spending less now than when she was working, a trend she attributes to the slower pace of retirement.
“The thing that I stopped doing is buying clothes and shoes and all the things I used to buy,” she said. “It used to be if I saw a pair of shoes, I’d buy it.”
She makes dinner for her kids twice a week and dines out occasionally with friends. She still works 10 hours a week, helping out a friend with a small business: Mostly as a favor, she said. She doesn’t need the money.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can you retire on Social Security alone? We asked actual retirees.