Sounds rather lovely what state?
Kentucky. South Central rural.
The cool thing about social security is it’s a United States thing, not an individual state thing. What that means is that how much you get when you retire is based on what you earned not where you live. So I spent 46 years in a tier one environment for I earned tier 1 wages as a computer specialist. Some years I earned more than what applies to social security payments. So I’m making fairly close to the maximum social security payout, and my wife gets half of that again, yet I live in a state where I can live comfortably on $1,200 a month. But the reason I’m able to do that is because my expenses are so absurdly low.
It basically means we spend about a third as much every month just living as we actually get from social security. Yet, if I lived in Seattle my social security would barely pay my house payment or my rent. Not to mention my real estate taxes.
I cannot emphasize enough just how freeing it is when your cost of living is so close to zero. I don’t even think about ways to make money. I’ve got more important stuff to worry about that’s a lot more fun and productive.