Embrace Golden Girls Retirement: Friendship & Fulfillment After 60

Picture it: Living with your best friends, lounging on the lanai, meeting Burt Reynolds. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

Image Credit: The Walt Disney Company

The iconic sitcom Golden Girls ran from 1985 to 1992 and featured four older women sharing an apartment and representing girl power for the silver generation.

The show was sassy, sexy, and very funny; in many ways it was the precursor to Sex and The City. It openly discussed sex, dating, and the single life -- but with a twist as it featured the oft-taboo subject of seniors with a vibrant sex life.

But as all the women were of a certain age, it's worth taking a look at their finances to see just how feasible it would be to live like a Golden Girl in your own twilight years.

Blanche Devereaux

Image Credit: The Walt Disney Company

Blanche was the sexy one, she loved looking good and feeling great and had no problem expressing her sexuality. She was the original Samantha Jones and gave credence to the notion that sex can continue well into your retirement years.

Blanche owned the home that the ladies shared in Miami, Florida. Dorothy and Rose answered an ad seeking roommates and the rest is history. But how much would the rent have cost the ladies back in the 80's and 90's?

Image Credit: The Walt Disney Company

The home at 6151 Richmond Street in Miami, Florida, was a stylish Spanish-style 4 bedroom 2 bath, with a full kitchen, a living/dining room and an outdoor area with patio. A similar home in the area rents for approx $2,500 month now, to work out how much it would have cost 30 years ago, you need to take a look at the base price index, back when the show aired it was around 100, now it is at 201, meaning we need to halve the amount that would be charged today to find how much the girls would need to pay = $1,250.

This rent would be split between the three renters at approximately $417.00 per month.

As the house was likely paid off, Blanche would have had this $1,251 per month as rental income. She holds a job throughout the series at an art gallery, assuming she was only paid the minimum wage for part-time hours in the years the show ran (from $3.35 $4.25 per hour) for 20 hours per week, this would amount to an average yearly salary of about $4,000 per year. Add in her rental income from the other girls and Blanche would have been bringing in about $19,000 per year.

Considering that she didn't have any housing costs, this would have been enough to live comfortably, but she may have still would still need to be careful with her money. Quite the departure from her beginnings as a southern belle with Big Daddy's old money.

Rose Nyland

Image Credit: The Walt Disney Company

Rose was the soft, gentle, and slightly daft member of the group, an eternal optimist and hopeless romantic. She kept the laughs coming with her tales from St Olaf, Minnesota and her homespun wisdom from her Norwegian-American family.

She would have needed to find $417 per month to pay her rent to Blanche, plus the cost of pastel clothing and cheesecake.

Rose worked as a grief counselor despite a short layoff, and received a pension from her late husband. She is shown to have some money troubles when her husband's company goes bankrupt and her pension is suspended. She eventually finds work as an assistant to a TV reporter. But as her expenses were quite low, it can be presumed that she was able to make ends meet quite comfortably.

According to Glassdoor, TV production assistants make an average of about $50,000 per year now, around $23,000 in 1987 dollars.

Dorothy Zbornak