For many Americans, retirement means living on a fixed income, and the math is unforgiving.
According to the The Senior Citizens League’s 2025 Senior Survey, roughly 39% of seniors depend on Social Security for the entirety of their income. That check, based on SSA data, averaged about $2,071 a month as of January 2026. After the 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment that took effect in January, Social Security benefits increased by roughly $56 a month on average — a meaningful bump, but still far short of what most retirees actually need to cover housing, food, health care, and transportation.
The retirement savings gap is equally sobering. According to the Federal Reserve’s 2024 Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households, roughly a third of non-retirees have no tax-preferred retirement account of any kind. That reality leaves millions of Americans heading into their later years with virtually no financial cushion beyond Social Security.
“Obviously you’re not going to have the kind of retirement that you might have dreamed of, but having any retirement savings is better than having no retirement savings. So, if you reach 50 and you don’t have anything to save, it’s definitely not too late to start and to save whatever you can,” said David John, senior policy adviser at AARP, as quoted by CBS Austin.
The New Retirement Reality: Why $1.46 Million Still Isn’t Enough
Cutting back on discretionary spending is not just about tightening a belt here and there. It is a critical response to a retirement landscape that keeps getting harder to navigate. The 2026 Northwestern Mutual Planning and Progress Study found that the average American now believes a comfortable retirement requires $1.46 million, a figure that leaves the vast majority of future retirees far behind. Nearly half (48%) of those surveyed said it is somewhat or very likely they will outlive their savings entirely.
Personal finance expert Suze Orman has long warned that traditional stock and bond portfolios no longer offer foolproof protection when markets turn turbulent, because economic downturns can cause both asset classes to decline at the same time. Her advice: build and maintain a liquid cash cushion covering three to five years of bare-bones living expenses. For retirees already struggling to fund that kind of safety net, the answer may be hiding in plain sight on their monthly credit card statements.
Diverting even a $600 monthly restaurant or coffee habit into a dedicated high-yield savings account generates $7,200 a year in breathing room. Over five years, that habit change alone builds a $36,000 buffer, which is real protection for a fixed-income household facing an unexpected medical bill or market downturn.
Americans Are Eating Themselves into Debt
For anyone already in a difficult financial position, one of the first expenses to cut is dining out, says Suze Orman.
“For you to have money, you have to learn to live below your means but within your needs. How do you do that? You do that by simply purchasing needs versus wants. What is a need? Need is food that you buy at a grocery store. What is a want? A want is going out to eat at a restaurant and doing it over and over again.”
Dining out also feeds credit card debt, which compounds quickly for retirees on fixed incomes. Most people underestimate how much they actually spend at drive-throughs and sit-down restaurants until they total it up. A daily stop at Dunkin for coffee and a bagel, at roughly $20 a visit, adds up to about $600 a month and more than $7,000 a year. Those dollars vanish without most people noticing.
The problem is widespread. According to a Bankrate Discretionary Spending Survey, 38% of U.S. adults say they are willing to go into debt to travel, dine out, or attend live entertainment. Dining out was the second most cited reason people would take on debt, behind only travel. For retirees with no savings buffer and a fixed monthly check, that kind of spending pattern is genuinely dangerous.
The message from Orman is straightforward: if you are retired, approaching retirement, or already stretched on a tight budget, pull back on restaurant spending now. The savings are immediate and the financial impact compounds every single month.
Editor’s note: This article updates the average monthly Social Security retirement benefit to $2,071 as of January 2026 per SSA data, replaces the earlier $1.46 million retirement benchmark sourcing with the 2026 Northwestern Mutual Planning and Progress Study, and updates the share of non-retirees with no retirement savings to approximately one-third, per the Federal Reserve’s 2024 household financial well-being report.
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