Mary, 53, lives in Orange County and asked to go by only her middle name to maintain her privacy. This transcript is based on a conversation with Mary, and has been edited for clarity and length.
Mary: I imagined my retirement just like, chilling and not even working a part-time [job]. I thought I would just be volunteering everywhere.
I retired from the county two years ago. I worked for 31 years for [the Orange County] Social Services agency. I had my career but I retired young. I mean, I'm still young in my eyes — I’m 53.
Now I've taken on two jobs as a caretaker, one for an Alzheimer’s patient and one for an elderly lady. The side hustling work gives me a good extra $500 a month.
In all of the retirement planning and looking forward to retiring, I had some health issues, and then life happened and I went through a divorce. So it was like everything went upside down all at once. And so you have to plan for those things a little bit better.
As a county employee, I do have my pension. I'm paying into my insurance, and then I'm paying into rent. If I go to the doctor, which I do lately a lot, my deductibles, my medicine, gas ... [and] food [are] outrageous right now. And because I get paid once a month, by the end of the month, I'm usually scraping.
Maybe this is for everyone lately — like before you could really say, “Oh, I'm going out to lunch with my friends,” right? And it would not be a big deal. But now it’s something you really have to think about, and it's sometimes embarrassing to say, “I can't go.”
I feel now “making it” for me is surviving and saving money because it's so hard to save.