Retirement Budgeting: The Real 2026 Numbers

Mint, the free budgeting app millions of retirees relied on for well over a decade, shut down permanently on March 23, 2024. It’s a small but genuinely telling example of how fast a “trusted” retirement resource can simply vanish, and why real retirement budgeting needs current numbers, not whatever a five year old article happened to list.

This guide replaces stale figures and a fabricated case study with real, sourced 2026 data: what healthcare actually costs in retirement, what Social Security actually pays out, and which tools and discounts genuinely still exist today.

Fidelity Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate, Social Security Administration, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CDC National Center for Health Statistics. Checked August 2026.

What Retirement Healthcare Actually Costs

Fidelity’s 2026 Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate, the most widely cited figure in retirement planning, puts the number at $185,500 for a single 65 year old retiree and $371,000 for a married couple retiring at the same age, both figures covering the rest of retirement. That’s a 7.5% jump from the prior year’s $172,500 single estimate.

The breakdown matters as much as the total. 48% of that cost comes from Medicare cost sharing, copays, coinsurance, and deductibles, 45% comes from Medicare Part B and Part D premiums themselves, and the remaining 7% covers costs Part D doesn’t reach. Critically, the estimate excludes dental care, over the counter medication, and custodial long term care, the single largest financial exposure many retirees actually face.

What Retirees Actually Spend Their Money On

Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2024, the most recent full year available, puts average annual spending for households headed by someone 65 or older at $61,432, roughly $5,100 a month. Housing dominates the budget more than most people expect going in.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, households aged 65 and older, 2024 data. Remaining 22% covers entertainment, apparel, insurance, and other categories.

Transportation at $9,538 a year and food at $7,940 round out the next largest categories, with healthcare’s direct out of pocket share at $7,779 a year sitting separately from the larger lifetime Fidelity estimate above, since that figure spreads a lump sum planning number across the entire retirement rather than one year’s actual spending.

The remaining 22%, roughly $13,982 a year, covers everything else: entertainment, apparel, insurance premiums beyond Medicare, and discretionary spending like travel. That’s real, meaningful money that retirees genuinely control the size of, unlike the largely fixed housing and healthcare categories above it.

Social Security’s Real 2026 Numbers

Social Security benefits for roughly 71 million retirees increased 2.8% starting in January 2026, the annual cost of living adjustment. That brought the average retired worker’s monthly benefit to approximately $2,064, up from $2,008.31 in August 2025, an increase of about $56 a month.

For survivors benefits specifically, the increase averaged $44.11 a month, and disability insurance benefits rose an average of $40.48. The Social Security Administration’s own retirement calculators, available directly at ssa.gov, remain the most reliable way to estimate your specific benefit rather than relying on a generic average, since actual payments vary significantly based on lifetime earnings and the age you claim.

Mint Is Dead: Real Budgeting Tools for 2026

Mint, Intuit’s free budgeting app, shut down permanently on March 23, 2024, after more than 15 years as one of the most recommended free tools for retirees managing a fixed income. Intuit pushed former Mint users toward Credit Karma, another Intuit product, but Credit Karma does not offer real budgeting or category tracking, only account aggregation and basic net worth tracking.

Monarch Money, built by former Mint engineers specifically to fill the gap, is the most commonly recommended direct replacement, combining Mint style account aggregation with YNAB style category budgeting and Empower style net worth tracking in one app. Unlike Mint, it isn’t free, running roughly $100 a year, a real new line item retirees managing a fixed income didn’t previously have to plan for.

• Monarch Money: The closest full replacement for Mint’s feature set, paid, roughly $100 a year.
• Waypoint Budget: A genuine free tier, unlimited manual transactions, every category, no credit card required.
• Goodbudget: Envelope style budgeting, real free tier, simple to use for retirees on a truly fixed income.
• Empower: Free, focused specifically on net worth and retirement account tracking rather than day to day budgeting.

The larger lesson is worth remembering past this specific app. A free financial tool with no clear revenue model is not guaranteed to exist in five years, and it’s worth checking that any tool a budgeting guide recommends is still actually operating before building a whole routine around it.

Real Prescription Savings, With Real Numbers

GoodRx remains a genuinely useful, free tool for prescription costs, and its savings are independently trackable rather than a vague marketing claim. Users saved an average of 83% on retail prescription prices in 2024, and GoodRx Gold members, a paid membership tier, averaged 88% savings across their prescriptions.

The free version works at more than 70,000 US pharmacies and requires no insurance or membership, just searching a drug and pharmacy, then showing the resulting coupon at checkout. Savings are largest on generic medications specifically, where a 90 day supply of a common generic like metformin can drop from around $60 cash price to roughly $4 with a coupon applied. GoodRx is not insurance and doesn’t replace Medicare Part D, but it’s worth price checking against your Part D copay before assuming your insurance offers the better price on every single prescription.

Beyond prescriptions specifically, the broader health and wellness category covers everything from vitamins to mobility aids to over the counter medication, all of which sit outside what GoodRx or Medicare typically discounts and are genuinely worth checking for a separate coupon code before buying at full price.

Real Senior Discounts Worth Knowing

Restaurant senior discounts genuinely still exist at several major chains, though terms vary and are worth confirming at the specific location before counting on them at checkout. Denny’s has historically offered 15% off for AARP members, and IHOP has run 10% off plus a dedicated senior menu, though both are subject to change by location, franchise owner, and time of year.

Airlines including Delta and Southwest have offered senior fare discounts in the past, though airline senior discount programs have shrunk significantly industry wide in recent years as carriers shift toward dynamic pricing that often makes a standard discounted fare cheaper anyway. Comparing a specific flight’s senior fare against a standard fare before booking is worth the extra minute, since the senior rate isn’t automatically the cheapest option available anymore on most routes.

Real Cost Cutting Strategies, Ranked by Impact

Not every retirement savings tip carries the same weight. Some strategies genuinely move the needle on a fixed income, others save a comparatively small amount for the effort involved.

Percentage saved per category, not a combined total. Actual savings depend heavily on individual circumstances, location, and specific medication or property.

Grocery Loyalty Programs, With Real Terms

Kroger’s loyalty points system works on a specific, checkable formula rather than a vague “earn points” promise. Shoppers earn 1 point per dollar spent, redeemable at $1 off for every 100 points, capped at $10 per day in store or online, or redeemable for fuel at 10 cents off per gallon per 100 points, capped at $1 off per gallon. Members of Kroger’s paid Boost subscription earn points at double that rate, which can meaningfully offset the subscription’s own cost for a household that fuels up and shops groceries regularly at the same chain.

Safeway’s senior specific discount is genuinely dated and specific too: 10% off at most locations on the first Wednesday of every month for shoppers 62 and older, on top of the store’s regular “Just for U” personalized weekly deals and points program. Both programs are genuinely worth stacking with a CouponZania coupon code where the store allows it, rather than treating loyalty points as the only available discount layer on a weekly grocery run.

State Tax Optimization, With the Real 2026 List

Nine states currently charge no state income tax at all whatsoever, meaning no tax on any form of retirement income: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. Five more states exempt most retirement income specifically even though they do tax other income: Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania, with Michigan’s retirement tax phase out completing fully in tax year 2026.

Only 8 states still tax Social Security benefits in some form as of 2026: Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Utah, and Vermont, and most of those offer exemptions for lower income retirees specifically, meaning a retiree well below the median income in one of those states may owe little or nothing on Social Security income in practice even though the state technically taxes it on paper.

What Downsizing Actually Saves

Downsizing’s savings come from several stacked sources rather than one line item: a smaller space directly lowers utility bills and property taxes, selling a larger home can free up a substantial lump sum to invest or supplement income, and moving into an independent living community shifts unpredictable repair and maintenance costs into a single predictable monthly fee rather than a surprise expense that shows up at the worst possible time.

Costs vary enormously by community type and by region. Fee for service, Type C, communities charge a lower upfront admission payment and lower monthly fee than comparable Life Plan or Continuing Care Retirement Communities, which bundle more health services into the price but cost meaningfully more both upfront and monthly. Getting quotes from more than one community type before committing is worth the extra research time given how much the total cost varies by structure alone, and it’s worth touring at least two or three specific communities in person rather than deciding from a brochure or a website.

Why the COLA Rarely Feels Like Enough

Social Security’s annual cost of living adjustment is meant to keep benefits in step with inflation, and 2026’s 2.8% increase sits close to the long run historical average adjustment. The gap most retirees actually feel comes from what the COLA measures versus what retirees actually spend their money on month to month.

The COLA is calculated from CPI-W, a consumer price index weighted for a typical working age household’s spending, not a retiree specific one. Medical care and elder care costs have consistently outpaced that general index, and the effect shows up immediately in a very specific way: Medicare Part B’s standard premium rose from $185 a month in 2025 to $202.90 in 2026, and that increase gets deducted directly from most retirees’ Social Security checks before they ever see the COLA increase land.

Seniors on Medicare spend roughly 13.6% of their income on health related costs, more than double the share younger households spend, and the Senior Citizens League has tracked Social Security’s purchasing power declining by approximately 13.7% since 2010 as benefit adjustments have consistently trailed the actual cost increases retirees face year after year.

None of this means the COLA is meaningless, a 2.8% increase is still real money added to a fixed income every single month. It does mean budgeting a small buffer specifically for Medicare premium increases and healthcare inflation running ahead of the headline COLA number is more realistic than assuming the annual adjustment fully covers next year’s actual cost increase across every category.

How Long Your Money Actually Needs to Last

Life expectancy at birth, the figure most retirement planning articles quote, isn’t actually the right number to plan around. Life expectancy at age 65 specifically is the more useful figure, since it already accounts for having survived to retirement age in the first place.

The CDC’s latest data, based on 2024 mortality figures published in January 2026, puts remaining life expectancy at 65 at 20.8 more years for women and 18.4 more years for men, meaning a healthy 65 year old should reasonably plan for retirement funds lasting into their mid to late 80s, not the high 70s that life expectancy at birth alone would suggest. Overall US life expectancy at birth reached a record 79.0 years in 2024, up 0.6 years from 2023, driven by falling death rates across nearly every leading cause of death simultaneously rather than one single medical breakthrough.

Planning around the 65 year old figure rather than the birth figure is a meaningfully more conservative, and considerably more accurate, basis for deciding how long a retirement nest egg actually needs to stretch.

Building a Budget That Actually Holds Up

• Get your actual Social Security estimate from ssa.gov directly rather than relying on a generic average, since your specific benefit depends heavily on lifetime earnings and claiming age.
• Budget for healthcare using Fidelity’s real 2026 figures, $185,500 single or $371,000 for a couple, and separately plan for long term care, which those figures explicitly exclude.
• Pick a currently operating budgeting tool, Monarch Money, Waypoint Budget, Goodbudget, or Empower, rather than following an old recommendation for a tool that may no longer exist.
• Price check prescriptions on GoodRx before paying a pharmacy’s cash price or even your Part D copay, especially for generic medications where the gap is often largest.
• Confirm senior discounts at the specific location before counting on them, since terms and availability have genuinely shrunk at some chains and airlines in recent years.

None of these figures are permanent. Social Security’s COLA resets annually, Fidelity updates its healthcare estimate every year, and budgeting app pricing and features change without much notice at all. Recheck the current numbers directly from the source before locking in a long term retirement plan around any single figure in this guide.

Frequently Asked Questions