Meet a boomer living off of $2,700 a month in retirement who plans on moving abroad for cheaper living and political stability

• Dee, 71, plans to move abroad for a cheaper cost of living and political stability.
• She exhausted her initial retirement savings and lives on Social Security and a pension.
• Many retirees, especially women, face economic challenges; some consider relocating for affordability.

Dee, 71, has a two-part retirement plan.

Phase one is complete. She retired about six years ago from a teaching career, and used the roughly $25,000 she had saved to buy a home in Georgia.

She said she wasn't able to save more because she was a single parent, and worked in a low-paying role as a secretary before going back to school to become a teacher.

It was only in the last 10 or so years of her working life that she was able to start and maintain a 401(k) account.

Since retiring, she's worked on and off at remote jobs to pay her bills.

"I've been able on my own to put aside about $10,000, which is very minimal, and all it would take would be one major repair to wipe that out," Dee — whose full name is known to Business Insider, but withheld over privacy concerns — said.

That brings her to phase two: move abroad for a cheaper cost of living and to escape US politics, Dee said. Her situation represents a conundrum more retirees, especially women, are facing: A precarious economic situation that could be thrown into free fall with just one misfortune. Looming over all of that is a looming and divisive election. For Dee, that calculation means potentially leaving her home country in search of financial and political stability.

"I kind of just am thinking about relocating outside of the country. So much is going on politically and the cost of living is outrageous. And so that's probably going to be my part two retirement plan," Dee said.

Women, especially single women, fare worse in retirement

Throughout her career, Dee and her children lived paycheck to paycheck.

"If I had missed one paycheck, we would've been on social services. So it was just a challenge," she said. "I always tried to put a little bit aside, like change and dollar bills and whatnot. I mean, I always had somewhere where I could go to grab $40, $50, but nothing substantial that would grow into something to help me in my later years."

Currently, Dee gets around $1,700 a month from Social Security and a $1,000 pension from her old secretary job, per documents BI viewed.

"I'm pretty much living off of about $2,700 a month and praying that my car holds up and the house holds up," she said.

Dee is also a part of a generation of women who were particularly set back by wage gaps. Research and surveys have repeatedly shown that women are more likely to have less in retirement savings than their male counterparts. That's a problem that's going to stick around, as female "peak boomers" — Americans turning 65 between 2024 and 2030 — have, on median, $185,086 in retirement assets. Men in that group, comparatively, have $268,745, according to the Alliance for Lifetime Income and the Retirement Income Institute.

Single women are even worse off. Those ages 55 to 64, per The Wall Street Journal's reporting, have just under $89,000 in retirement savings on average; single men in the same cohort have, on average, just under $137,000.

At the same time, a solid chunk of seniors — around a quarter, as of a 2017 SSA analysis — rely on Social Security for at least 90% of their income. That's also become a cause for concern among retirees and would-be-retirees, as Social Security's future funding remains uncertain.

"There's just such a huge wage gap, and I am listening to the news now and I hear people saying women are still paid 70-something cents on a dollar," Dee said. "And I'm like, I can't believe this is still happening."

Looking to move abroad

Dee is eyeing a move out of the US — something other retirees have done to reduce costs in life post-work. She's currently considering Central America.

"It looks like something that I could afford to live a little bit more, a little bit better; my income would stretch a little bit more," she said. Dee initially began looking into an overseas move in 2016, but then she got a cancer diagnosis; she went through chemo but emerged realizing that she needed to be somewhere where she had community nearby.

However, after connecting with a friend who's made the move and found community, Dee is ready to move forward once again. Broadly, she wishes there were more affordable housing options in the US for seniors, so that they can live around one another and socialize.

"Living in a house, I sometimes feel isolated from other people, and so I do try to get involved with a swimming class or a yoga class, that type of thing. And I do have a few friendships that I've formed from playing some athletic sports a few years back, but everybody's pretty much spread out and it's not always easy to get together," she said. That's the type of community that her friend has found, and she hopes to find.

"I am just hoping to become part of a community that has activities that I can look forward to participating in that can be there for you in an emergency, just a closer community of people in my age range and with the same needs as I have," she said.

Dee also has another reason for wanting to get out of the country.

"The political climate right now, it terrifies me. It just terrifies me. I'm a child of the sixties, so I just see things going backward and the hate and the violence and whatnot, it just terrifies me. And at this age, it's so stressful to watch the news, it's so stressful. I just don't want that in my later years."

Are you a retiree contemplating leaving the country, or who has already left? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com.