Here’s What Retirement Looks Like for Single Women in America

The risk of running out of money in retirement rises for those with lower pay, longer lives or no partner.

Millions of single women wrestle with all three.

Women earn less than men on average during their working years and are more than twice as likely as men to leave the workforce for more than one year to care for children or ageing parents , according to a survey of 5,261 Americans that Goldman Sachs plans to release Monday.

This shortfall compounds in retirement. Social Security checks are 20% smaller for women who first claim at 62 to 64 years of age, compared with men the same age.

Single women, in particular, have smaller 401(k) and IRA nest eggs . On average, single women between 55 and 64 have about $88,600 in retirement savings, compared with $136,685 for single men and $423,800 for married couples in the same age group, according to Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research.

Women also tend to live longer , raising the projected total cost of retirement as they have to stretch their smaller savings over more years.

Despite these financial obstacles, single women find ways to pursue new ambitions in retirement, including launching businesses and traveling the world. They could have more time if their caregiving responsibilities have ended. With more freedom than many of their married counterparts, some women can make big changes without needing to compromise or negotiate.

We spoke in depth with four single women who have retired. Some have sizeable nest eggs, while others rely on Social Security benefits or earnings from part-time gigs. Each has found fulfilling ways to define retirement for herself.

Deb Hallisey saved diligently during her career as a consultant, and sought help from a financial adviser.

As a single woman, the Lawrenceville, N.J., resident said, “I knew it was going to be on me to provide for myself.”

All that planning was thrown off track after her father died in 2015. She had to put her work with clients on hold to help her mother—who was blind—find live-in help. When her billable hours dropped that year, she lost her job.

Hallisey, 66, sent résumés to consulting contacts, but she was tired of traveling and craved a new challenge.

She found it in becoming a caregiver for her mother, who died in 2022. In addition to handling her mother’s finances and medical appointments, Hallisey spent half of her weekends at her mother’s house to give her mom’s paid caregiver time off.

Angry and resentful, Hallisey quickly realised something had to change.

“When I was angry, my attitude gave Mom an attitude, and we’d start the weekend off wrong. There is a moment when you say, ‘I can’t keep doing that,’ ” she said.

Her mother urged her to write about her caregiving experiences, something Hallisey threw herself into in 2016, after meeting a successful blogger.

She soon launched a website, Advocate for Mom and Dad, and has written two books about caregiving. She speaks frequently on the topic and does consulting for families.

Hallisey saved $600,000 for retirement and built a $50,000 emergency account she used after the layoff. She currently takes $2,500 a month from her retirement savings and earns $500 a month from her business.

Thanks to the strong stock market, her balance is $525,000. Her home is valued at about $500,000 and she has paid off her mortgage.

In June, Hallisey plans to claim Social Security and use her $3,400 monthly benefit for living expenses. Her goal is to leave her IRA for emergencies, including future caregiving expenses.

She recently hired a financial professional to serve as her power of attorney if she becomes unable to manage her finances. After having done that for her mother, she said, “I could not in good conscience ask a friend to do that for me.”

She spends about $2,200 a month, including $260 for home and car insurance and $250 for food. She sets aside $750 a month for property taxes.

She never expected to tap in to retirement savings early, but has no regrets.

“I’m not making enough to support myself,” said Hallisey, who plans to write another book. “But I love it.”

Marianne Simpson retired slowly.

She chose to wind down her financial advisory business over three years, using the transition to test drive retirement while continuing to build up her nest egg. All this still didn’t fully prepare her, she said, for the moment she put her longtime home up for sale and closed the deal on her new life.

She left the Cleveland area and her 25-year career behind and bought a new place in Chicago close to her daughter, son-in-law and two young grandchildren.

With $2 million in retirement savings and a $3,800 monthly Social Security check, she’s in much better shape than most retirees. She also knows better than most how one’s health and lifespan can largely dictate how long money lasts.

“My daughter tells me to spend more on myself, but my mother lived to 101 so I want to make sure I don’t run out of money,” Simpson said.

As a single adult, she said it is critical that she can manage any future healthcare challenges independently and not have to rely on friends or family.

She now spends about $11,000 a month, around half of which goes to setting aside reserves for large expenses such as taxes and insurance. Her big yearly expenses are about $10,000 for insurance including her long-term care and personal umbrella policies, $10,000 to charity and $15,000 in property taxes. Simpson spends roughly $12,000 a year on travel, including her recent two-week trip to Spain.

She volunteers in her church’s shelter for Venezuelan migrants, cooking dinners and doing laundry. She also volunteers several times a month at a local secondhand store where all of the receipts go to local charities.

“The volunteer work helps give me a new sense of purpose,” she said.

Simpson has met new friends, though socialising as a single woman isn’t always easy, she said.

“Much of the world still moves in couples,” she said.

Stephanie Perry retired at age 41.

Perry was inspired by the FIRE movement, which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. Those in it save aggressively and pare spending so they can leave work decades ahead of schedule.

“Retirement is the freedom to be anywhere in the world at any time,” she said.

When she told her parents she was quitting her pharmacy tech job to live the rest of her life traveling the world, they worried about her mental health. Eight years later, her parents see how happy she is and have come around to the idea, she said.

Perry does work, but no more than 10 to 20 hours a week on average. She earns money through house sitting, a YouTube channel, virtual coaching and co-hosting events for Black women. She only takes on projects she likes.

Early retirees often call this part-time approach “barista FIRE.”

Since her early retirement, she has saved more than $100,000 in a Vanguard IRA. She has no debt and all her various side hustles add up to a six-figure income, she said. Perry has traveled to more than 30 countries, including Australia, South Africa and Cambodia.

Now 49, Perry never pictured this life when she was in her 20s and 30s.

Perry said she was miserable working the overnight shift at the pharmacy. She revenge-shopped and ran up debt to temporarily soothe her spirit. The bank foreclosed on her house.

She began following YouTubers who were enjoying early retirement and an itinerant lifestyle. She wanted to retire, too.

She spends about $2,500 a month, on average, including travel medical insurance, her cellphone and food. She lives out of two suitcases and stores the rest of her belongings at her parents’ home in Delaware, where she visits three or four times a year.

Perry checks in with family and friends in the U.S. regularly through video calls. She goes on the occasional date, but has no plans to get married.

Perry never wants to own a home again and has no plans to live full time in the U.S. She’s working on a book for Black women about how they can leave their 9-to-5 jobs. She would like to settle down in Mexico or Costa Rica one day but hasn’t immediately made preparations for retiring from working entirely.

“I’m never going back to my old life,” she said.

Lori Renee Fye in her home. PHOTO: CHLOE TADDIE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Lori Renee Fye , 65, joined the U.S. Air Force after high school, serving in a mobile radar unit in Germany and at bases across the U.S.

She continued traveling after the military, working in administrative jobs for a conservative pundit in Washington, D.C., an apple baron in Texas, and the chairman of a Native American tribe in California. After her divorce in 2014, she sought refuge in European travel.

After her younger brother’s divorce in 2018, she returned to the Canton, Ohio, area where she grew up. She came to provide emotional support and never left.

“This is the place that made me, gave me my work ethic and basic values,” said Fye. “There is a thing called a sense of place. I’ve realised I’m back in my place.”

Canton is more diverse than she remembered. No one is shocked anymore at the sight of a woman riding a motorcycle, as Fye used to do, she said.

This fall, Fye began volunteering about 30 hours a week at a newly opened LGBTQ+ community centre, Queer in Canton. She gives tours and helps organise the cafe and a clothing donation closet.

Though she says she’s an introvert, Fye enjoys meeting new people, even a group of teens that gathers weekly at Queer in Canton.

“Young kids usually get on my nerves,” she said. But “seeing them hang out together is one of the greatest joys I get from the place. It gives them a place to go and be with other kids who are different and not be bullied.”

Fye, who earned about $70,000 at the peak of her career, lives on her Social Security check of $1,665, plus the $100 her former spouse sends her each month.

She wishes she had worked a little longer to boost her Social Security benefit.

She pays monthly rent of $500 to her brother, who owns the two-family home they share, bordering a woodsy area with a creek.

“I feel very secure here. He pays for the water and Wi-Fi. I pay for the trash collection and the bulk of the mortgage,” she said. “It’s nice to be with someone I can trust to be there for me. Everybody needs one person. My brother is my person in a lot of respects.”

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

Here’s What Retirement Looks Like for Single Women in America

Four retirees open up about their finances and how they spend their time

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.