Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: a great many people retire on Social Security and very little else, and most retirement writing is not addressed to them. This page is. It contains no judgement about how you got here and nothing is sold on it — what it has is the arithmetic of what a benefit actually covers, and the list of supports that exist and go unclaimed.
What a benefit has to cover
The useful comparison is not against a headline “number you need” — it is against what households of your age actually spend. From our own extract of the Consumer Expenditure microdata, the median household aged 65–74 spends $50,068 a year, and aged 75 or older, $41,548. The benchmark by age and housing situation.
Housing is the whole game at this level. Among 65–74 households, those who own outright spend about $18,928 on housing while those still paying a mortgage spend about $25,927. On a benefit-only income, that difference is not a line item — it decides whether the arithmetic works at all.
We are not printing an average benefit figure here. We could not read one from a primary source we trust, and on this page of all pages a wrong number would be worse than none. Your own figure is on your Social Security statement, and it is the only one that matters for this arithmetic.
The supports that exist, and go unclaimed
These are not charity and they are not obscure. They go unclaimed mostly because nobody tells people they qualify.
- Supplemental Security Income. If your income and resources are low enough, SSI can top up a small Social Security benefit — and being 65 or older qualifies you on age alone, with no disability requirement, which is the single most-missed fact in this area. A Social Security benefit does not rule you out; it counts as income, and the first $20 of it does not even count. How the aged path works, and why receiving one does not exclude the other.
- Medicaid, in most states, follows SSI eligibility — frequently worth more than the cash.
- Property tax relief for older homeowners exists in most states, under names that vary (homestead exemptions, circuit breakers, senior freezes). If you own your home, this is usually the largest single saving available and it requires an application.
- Energy assistance and food programmes operate on income tests that a benefit-only household frequently meets.
The pattern is that almost all of it requires you to apply, and none of it is automatic. If you take one thing from this page, make it that.
The levers that are actually available
Honestly: they are few, and they are mostly about fixed costs rather than income.
Housing is the first and largest. The data above says so plainly. Whether that means paying off a remaining mortgage, moving somewhere cheaper, or taking in family, it moves more money than any other decision on this page.
The claiming decision, if it has not been made. It is irreversible in practice and it sets a survivor benefit that outlives you — what claiming order does to a survivor.
Work, if it is possible, is not penalised the way people fear. Before full retirement age an earnings test applies, but the withheld amounts are not lost — they raise the benefit later. And for SSI purposes, earnings are counted at less than a dollar for a dollar, so working leaves you ahead — how the exclusions work.
Sources
Spending figures from our own extract of the BLS Consumer Expenditure Public-Use Microdata, Interview 2024, reconciled against BLS Table 1300. SSI rules are cited on the pages linked above from 20 C.F.R. part 416. All read 2026-08-06.
Honest gaps. No average or maximum Social Security benefit appears here, because we could not verify one at a source we trust. Property tax relief, energy assistance and food programmes are described in general terms because they are state-by-state and we have not verified any individual state’s rules. Your Area Agency on Aging can check all of them for you at no cost, and that is a better route than any page.
See methodology and corrections. General information, not financial advice. No advertising appears on this page.