<prompt> Human: So to elaborate on the situation in the title, this is about my mother. She is 65 and her Social Security wouldnt be close to enough to support her in retirement. She was thinking she would have to work until the day she died. Im much more optimistic, I think given the right plan we can get her to a modest retirment where the bills can get paid without too much trouble.So here is my plan, and criticize it as it warrants.First were going to get the goal of retiring by 70 to max out her Social Security. This also gives us 5 years to invest in some fixed income securities to supplement her income in retirement. Im not so naive to think that will be enough however, So another part of this plan is to have her work part time under the table cleaning houses which she is very good at I might add for a few extra bucks.Next Ive advised her to move down in house at the end of this time period, hopefully the housing market doesnt go kaput in the mean time, and she can extract 10-20k in equity to put towards more fixed income securities.Lastly, my sister is living with her, and the plan is to have my sister start paying rent, some amount that is reasonable for both parties sister doesnt make much money.Also, we should do our best to have most if not all our debts paid off by the end of this 5 year period to reduce overhead.What do you guys think about this plan? Is there anything to add? takeaway? All I ask is you be cordial in your responses. EDIT: for the record she works for walmart, and working part time under the table cleaning some houses would be an upgrade for her in terms of work satisfaction, she enjoys cleaning  <response>: First off, she doesnt need a 100 phone plan. Buy a cheap phone, set her up with the cheapest phone plan you can find. Right there you can get back 50month.You keep saying that you want to put some equity in fixed income securities, but I just dont see where this capital is going to come from that will let you actually see a meaningful return which will help her.Lets say absolute best case, the minimum wage daughter can figure out a way to 100 split living expenses with your mom. Youll free up 550month that way. In 5 years, assuming you dont need a dime of that money, shell have 33k. What are you going to invest that in where its going to have some meaningful impact while still being safe? Youre talking about netting her 100month. A fixed income security is predicated on having a very large principal to return real money.These are all fine ideas for an incremental improvement over where she is now, but honestly, at 70 with no savings, no home, and a social security benefit which doesnt cover her expenses, if you dont want her to work forever, I think youre going to have to consider more drastic changes. You could look into subsidized housing; some places have apartments for elderly people on a fixed income, where the rent charged is actually a percentage of your total income.If you can get her house paid off in 5 years is that included in the debts paid off idea?, that would be tremendous, but in order to do that I think youre going to have to consider the house as an investment youre making with an expectation of getting equity when it sells. That wouldnt be totally unreasonable if youre in a financial position to do so; youre actually making an investment rather than simply giving money away, and you can tie it to a real asset which helps a lot with messy family money situations. 