Retirees who are single - what advice are you getting?

[ohio_peasant]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

again , not all married people or couples have children and a safety net . ...

That's an important point. Long-range planning, and so many lifestyle and financial decisions, differ more between those who become parents and those who remain child-free, than between those who are married and those who are single. To rephrase, parents much budget for the rearing of their children, perhaps consider inheritance issues, and then - possibly! - regard their adult children as a support-network (at least socially) in their old-age. The child-free, on the other hand, don't have those budgetary demands in young-adulthood and middle-age, but also don't have a kin-group with whom to socialize and commiserate and have a cup of tea, in old age.

The OP lamented the paucity of actionable financial advice for unmarried people. Note also the lack of such advice for the child-free, as nearly all financial planning deals with the compact between generations, with family budgets and so forth.

This hearkens back to my point about ambiguity and genericism of advice. If I don't have children, should I use that advantage to save extra money, relative to those of my peers, who are parents? Or should I instead splurge? Does lack of children now, mean lack of demand on my savings by a "failure to launch" generation of stunted young-adults, thus simplifying my retirement? Or on the contrary, does that mean that I won't be able to move in with the kiddos, once I'm feeble and sessile and senile? We really can't say. And thus it's hard to be specific about optimal strategies.