Any ideas for living off a social security benefit of only $680 a month?

[hollysmom]

21. I live in one of the most expensive parts of NJ, the North East.

I like the convenience of being able to walk everywhere I need to go or to take a bus, to house on of the last over treed properties in town and still have 25% of the town land be parkland so the dog and I have many choices to walk indifferent directions. I also live near family,. but really don't see them too much since everyone has their own issues, except for a niece that found me on facebook after years of being forbidden to speak to me by her evil mother, ha ha . seriously evil long stories.

I would not make it without savings. I admit to being an obsessive saver - worked in an outsourced pension company and the actuaries used to put out a newsletter every day about pensions and what you needed to retire, so it got to me, that and the fact that I knew I would have to retire before the age of 60 because of the outsourcing craze or cult (because it cost the company more money arghhh, could never get that through the corporate heads, even though I had the spread sheets to prove it, but the actuaries sold us to Mellon by that point and they were run by buzz word driven idiots). I never came close to the million dollars the actuaries recommended in personal savings, doubt many do, but I find just an annual 20K to add to social security and expecting to live to only 85 as most of my family, makes it work. living in one house for 30 years and paying off the mortgage helps too.

someone told me that Costa Rico was the ideal place to retire 20 years ago, not so sure about that anymore.

Believe it or not, comfort will be the hardest part, as my arthritis gets worse and worse. If you are young enough for adventure good traveling, but when it comes to having the limitations of getting older, my town already has a program for the elderly living at home of daily phone calls to make sure you are OK, food delivery for when you are not well, snow shoveling and leaf raking for the elderly free or at discount, it almost makes up for it having the highest taxes in a high tax area.