Why The Golden Girls offers a perfect blueprint for modern retirement

As a small child in the 1980s, I tuned in weekly to see the hilarious antics of the Golden Girls. I loved seeing the friendship and support between the three 50-something housemates of Blanche (Rue McClanahan), Rose (Betty White), and Dorothy (Bea Arthur), while the affectionate bickering between Dorothy and her unfiltered 80-something mother Sophia (Estelle Getty) always struck me as mother-daughter relationship goals.

While the show was ahead of its time in myriad ways, one important legacy it has given Generation X is a blueprint for adult communal living. Our generation understands what a “Golden Girls retirement” means, and we have all likely spent some happy hours daydreaming about our ideal cast of friends and family to share a wicker-and-pastel Miami home with.

But co-living situations like those shared by the Golden Girls aren’t just the stuff of TV and daydreams. They can offer excellent benefits to adults both before and after retirement and are well worth exploring, no matter where you currently are in your career.

Here’s how embracing the Golden Girls lifestyle can offer you more stability and happiness.

Housing costs

In the world of The Golden Girls, the Miami house belongs to Blanche, and she initially advertises for two roommates–Dorothy and Rose–to help pay the mortgage. (Sophia comes to live with them after her retirement home burned down.)

When the show debuted in September, 1985, the median home price in the United States was $84,700, and the median income for a single woman householder was $13,660. That median income for an individual was about 16% of the median home price. Considering these numbers, it’s understandable why Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose all needed each other’s help affording housing and other costs to live in Miami.

As of the second quarter of 2025, the median home price in the U.S. is a staggering $512,800, while the median income for a single woman householder is $60,440–or about 11.8% of the median home price. (The median income for a single man is significantly higher at $83,260).

This sad reality of our current housing situation highlights one of the most obvious benefits of living like the Golden Girls. Pooling your resources can help you all better afford high housing costs and let your money go farther.

Social support

Whenever Dorothy gets frustrated with her mother, she jokingly threatens to send Sophia back to the Shady Pines retirement home. The audience knows that Dorothy’s threat has no teeth because Sophia was miserable at Shady Pines. The older woman was lonely there and did not have the social and emotional outlet among the other patients that she finds with her daughter and their friends in the Miami house.

There’s a profound truth behind the jokes about Shady Pines. Human beings crave connection and companionship with each other, and we get pretty down when we don’t have it. This is why loneliness and social isolation are serious problems for aging adults.

More social interaction, recreation, and improved social supports have all been found to improve the mental health of lonely seniors.

Health benefits

The four Golden Girls experience various illnesses and health scares (including a truly groundbreaking episode where Rose must get tested for AIDS) throughout the series, and not every health problem can be fixed in a 22 minute episode. But the bond between these four friends is helpful when they are in poor health, since whoever is ill does not feel alone.

Research has found that loneliness can exacerbate health problems, while a lack of social support can lead to self-medicating behavior or further self-isolation. Specifically, social isolation is linked to the following health problems:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Heart disease
• Memory problems
• Cognitive decline
• Weakened immune function
• High blood pressure
• Dementia
• Death

A living situation where you share space with people you like and want to spend time with can help protect your mental and physical health. That’s because you and your housemates can offer each other social and physical support when needed–helping you feel like part of a community. And if that includes the occasional midnight slice of cheesecake on the lanai, all the better.

Thank you for being a friend

Adopting a Golden Girls lifestyle has so much to recommend it, whether you wait to do so after you retire or gather your friends together right now. Sharing housing expenses will make your cost of living much cheaper and could also reduce other important expenses, such as food, transportation, and childcare. The social support offered by a Golden Girls style living situation can help improve both your mental and physical health, and be fun and rewarding, to boot.

Now you just need to perfect your St. Olaf stories.

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