47% of retirement pensions do not reach the minimum wage. Neither did 73% of widow’s benefits. These are the most recent data from Social Security. With the higher cost of living, stretching the pension becomes mandatory for many. Is there room to do it and even save?

Having the situation clear is the starting point. To manage personal finances “you will have to make a completely new budget, from scratch, taking into account all income and expenses,” they comment from BBVA. In addition to income, you will have to plan based on fixed charges and expenses –such as health insurance–, accumulated assets and the cost of living in the region in which you reside.

Also think long term. When you retire, you don’t realize that you have a couple of decades ahead to manage. “It is not known how to differentiate between the short, medium and long term. Everyone makes the mistake of thinking that everything is short term and in the end inflation eats them up”, comments Rafael García Bravo, financial educator at Grupo Bárymont. “From 60 or 67 years to 85 or 95 there are up to 35 years, which economically speaking are many, but mentally they are visualized as short term,” he emphasizes.

If there is more slack, you can decide to throw away the savings you had and save your pension, or the opposite, they suggest at BBVA. But if savings have not been reached at these ages, it is time to cut expenses. Among their expenses, essential goods and services have more weight, which are more difficult to adjust. To reduce the cost of food, the advice is usually to go to supermarkets to compare prices and look for offers. They find it more difficult to apply if there are mobility problems. “The solution may be to buy more private labels and offers,” says Antoni Cunyat, professor of economics and business at the UOC and the University of Valencia. Nor are they likely to take advantage of discounts when hiring or buying online.

Not everything is disadvantage. Normally you can cut up to 30% of secondary family consumption, but among pensioners there are not so many. There are fewer leisure outlets or impulsive online purchases, for example. “There are factors that make saving easier. A large part owns a home, they do not have school or child expenses and they have less leisure expenses ”, sums up Cunyat.

In energy supplies, the bill can be reduced by up to 70%, point out from Bárymont. In some cases you can access more affordable rates for being retired. And the contracted power also has to be reviewed in case it is excessive. In other supplies, it is advisable to compare and adjust like the rest of the population: “We recently dealt with the case of some retirees who paid 170 euros a month for TV when they only wanted it to watch football. The bill was reduced by 60% without losing the service they wanted”. In this group, you can also cut back on games of chance, with an eye on the lottery, they point out.

Instead of expenses, you can attack by income. Mainly renting a room or signing a reverse mortgage, a monthly rent with the house as collateral. Because, as in everything, it is not the same to charge 900 a month as the 1,500 of the new retirees in March. “In low pensions, their focus is not so much saving, but surviving. They have to do a lot of financial engineering,” says Carlos Tercero Álvez, from Bárymont.

As far as possible you should avoid getting into debt. “Financing should not be the way out unless you make ends meet. At certain ages it is very expensive and difficult to obtain ”, warn in Bárymont. “It would only serve to aggravate the situation. The alternative is to see the resources we have and from there adjust needs to get out of the situation”.