Yahoo Finance Meet a boomer living off of $2,700 a month in retirement who plans on moving abroad for cheaper living and political stability
Dee, 71, plans to move abroad for a cheaper cost of living and political stability.
She exhausted her initial retirement savings and lives on Social Security and a pension.
Many retirees, especially women, face economic challenges; some consider relocating for affordability.
Dee, 71, has a two-part retirement plan.
Phase one is complete. She retired about six years ago from a teaching career and used the roughly $25,000 she'd saved to buy a home in Georgia.
She said she wasn't able to save more because she was a single parent and worked in a low-paying role as a secretary before going back to school to become a teacher.
It was only in the last 10 or so years of her working life that she was able to start and maintain a 401(k) account.
Since retiring, she's worked on and off at remote jobs to pay her bills.
"I've been able on my own to put aside about $10,000, which is very minimal, and all it would take would be one major repair to wipe that out," said Dee — whose full name is known to Business Insider but is withheld over privacy concerns.
That brings her to phase two: move abroad for a cheaper cost of living and to escape US politics. Her situation represents a conundrum more retirees, especially women, are facing: A precarious economic situation that could be thrown into free fall with just one misfortune. Looming over all of that is a divisive election. For Dee, that calculation could mean leaving her home country in search of financial and political stability.
"I kind of just am thinking about relocating outside of the country. So much is going on politically and the cost of living is outrageous. And so that's probably going to be my part two retirement plan," Dee said.
Women, especially single women, fare worse in retirement
Throughout her career, Dee and her children lived paycheck to paycheck.
"If I had missed one paycheck, we would've been on social services. So it was just a challenge," she said. "I always tried to put a little bit aside, like change and dollar bills and whatnot. I mean, I always had somewhere where I could go to grab $40, $50, but nothing substantial that would grow into something to help me in my later years."
Currently, Dee gets about $1,700 a month from Social Security and a $1,000 pension from her old secretary job, according to documents BI viewed.
"I'm pretty much living off of about $2,700 a month and praying that my car holds up and the house holds up," she said.
Dee is also a part of a generation of women who were particularly set back by wage gaps. Research and surveys have repeatedly shown that women are more likely to have less in retirement savings than their male counterparts. That's a problem that's set to stick around; a study from the Alliance for Lifetime Income and the Retirement Income Institute found that female "peak boomers" — Americans turning 65 between 2024 and 2030 — had a median of $185,086 in retirement assets. Men in that group had $268,745, the study found.
Single women are even worse off. The Wall Street Journal reported that those ages 55 to 64 had just under $89,000 in retirement savings on average, while single men in the same cohort had just under $137,000.
The Social Security Administration found in 2017 that a solid chunk of seniors — about a quarter — relied on Social Security for at least 90% of their income. That's also become a cause for concern among retirees and would-be-retirees, as Social Security's future funding remains uncertain.
"There's just such a huge wage gap, and I am listening to the news now and I hear people saying women are still paid 70-something cents on a dollar," Dee said. "And I'm like, I can't believe this is still happening."
Looking to move abroad
Dee is eyeing a move out of the US — something other retirees have done to reduce costs in life post-work. She's currently considering Central America.
"It looks like something that I could afford to live a little bit more, a little bit better; my income would stretch a little bit more," she said. Dee initially began looking into an overseas move in 2016, but then she got a cancer diagnosis; she went through chemo but emerged realizing that she needed to be somewhere where she had community nearby.
But after connecting with a friend who's made the move and found community, Dee is ready to move forward once again. Broadly, she wishes there were more affordable housing options in the US for seniors, so that they can live around one another and socialize.
"Living in a house, I sometimes feel isolated from other people, and so I do try to get involved with a swimming class or a yoga class, that type of thing. And I do have a few friendships that I've formed from playing some athletic sports a few years back, but everybody's pretty much spread out and it's not always easy to get together," she said.
"I am just hoping to become part of a community that has activities that I can look forward to participating in that can be there for you in an emergency, just a closer community of people in my age range and with the same needs as I have," she said. That's the type of community her friend has found.
Dee also has another reason for wanting to get out of the country.
"The political climate right now, it terrifies me. It just terrifies me. I'm a child of the '60s, so I just see things going backward and the hate and the violence and whatnot, it just terrifies me. And at this age, it's so stressful to watch the news, it's so stressful. I just don't want that in my later years."
Are you a retiree contemplating leaving the country, or who has already left? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com.
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