How a Self-Employed Woman Created a Strong Retirement Strategy on Her Own

Editor's Note: This story originally appeared on Boldin.

See how a single self-employed woman used steady habits to build a secure retirement.

Andrea Solarz began saving long before she had a clear purpose for it. In elementary school, she would bring a dime to class and add it to a Bank of America passbook savings account. At home, her parents gave their children a set monthly sum and expected them to manage it themselves, with no chores attached. The message was simple and practical: Here is your money — decide how to use it.

She absorbed that lesson early. Andrea is single, has no children, and has handled her finances on her own throughout her working life.

“You have to pay attention to it all yourself,” she recently told Steve Chen. “You’re the only one managing it.”

By her 20s, Andrea was reading Kiplinger, going to American Association of Individual Investors meetings, and building a brokerage account she rarely touched. Much of her career was self-employed, and because her income was irregular, she could not always rely on steady savings targets.

What she did not realize until a couple of years ago was that her approach had been enough. “It was just this huge revelation to me that I actually was in good financial shape,” Andrea said. That realization gave her the confidence to claim Social Security, pay off her mortgage, and fully commit to retirement.

Early Lessons About Budgeting Shape Money Habits for Life

Andrea’s parents believed lasting financial habits come from making real-world choices with your money. Their rule was that the money they gave their kids had to cover whatever the kids wanted it to cover.

“It wasn’t an allowance like, oh, if you clean the bathroom, then you get an allowance,” she recalled. “It was more like a stipend… You get a standard amount of money, and you have to use it to figure out how to cover the expenses.”

That arrangement pushed Andrea to think about priorities and trade-offs before she reached high school.

“We had to manage that,” she said. “I learned to handle money and think about it as something I could use to save up for something important.”

The system worked because the decisions were hers and the consequences were obvious. She learned early that money is limited, and that how it is managed determines what can be done with it.

Watching Her Father Panic-Sell Taught Her to Stay Calm

For her 13th birthday, Andrea’s father gave her three shares of Holiday Inn stock. Soon after, she noticed he was not especially steady as an investor.

“He was kind of a buy high, sell low kind of guy,” she said. “He would panic and say, I can’t do this anymore, and get out of things.”

Seeing that pattern up close had the opposite effect on Andrea. She did not sell when fear set in. When markets fell or a holding became uncomfortable, she stayed put. “I always held on,” she said.

Financial advisers spend years helping clients build that kind of discipline. Andrea developed it by watching and learning, and it became the backbone of an approach she kept for decades.

Why Big Gains in a Single Stock Require a Different Discipline

Not every long-term hold works out, and Andrea learned that personally.

A friend gave her access to an initial public offering. She bought in, the stock dropped to 97 cents a share, and she added more at that price. When the pandemic hit, the position surged to more than $100,000, a gain of more than 70 times what she had invested.

“I thought, this is great,” she remembered. “It’s going to go up even higher.”

Andrea kept holding, but the stock later fell again. It is now worth roughly $20,000.

“You have to think: take advantage of where it is,” she said. “Don’t be greedy and think it’s going to get even better.”

It is a useful reminder that patience is not always the right answer. With concentrated holdings, the discipline that helps during broad market downturns can work against you when one position rises quickly. Taking profits is not the same as panic-selling.

She Got Roth Conversions Right, but Wishes She Had Started Earlier

Andrea learned about Roth conversions through her own reading and figured out that they make the most sense when taxable income is lower and before Social Security and required minimum distributions begin. “That is the golden point for doing those,” she said.

She wishes she had started sooner and converted more money at lower tax rates. Still, she believes the topic is often overhyped.

“I think there is a lot of misinformation and hype out there about Roth conversions,” she said. “Where people end up making conversions and overpaying their taxes.” The strategy only works when today’s tax rate is lower than the one you expect later.

She also came late to the zero-rate capital gains strategy. One year, she paid no tax on investment gains by staying under the right income threshold, then realized she could have used that approach for years.

“Oh man, if I’d realized that earlier, I could have reset the basis for practically every investment that I have,” she said. “That would’ve been a better strategy.”

Her takeaway is that retirement tax planning rewards people who look at the entire path ahead.

Seeing the Full Picture Changed What Felt Possible

Andrea had used a spreadsheet for years. It worked for a while, then stopped being practical. “I remember sitting there one day and going, there has to be an easier way,” she said.

She found Boldin, created a free account, and then left it unused. Later, after seeing a promotion, she returned. Once she entered her accounts and income sources, the overall retirement picture surprised her.

“It was just this huge revelation that I actually was in good financial shape,” she said.

She had been self-employed for much of her career, with uneven income over long stretches. When she went out on her own, she opened a SEP-IRA but did not contribute much. Her employer-plan savings came from jobs she had held decades earlier. Her brokerage account included both gains and losses.

Taken piece by piece, it did not look like much. But when viewed as a projected income stream over 30 years, it was enough.

“When I compare myself to a lot of people in these groups online, I’m clearly in the bottom quarter in terms of what I have,” she said. “But it’s plenty. It would be difficult for me, with my spending patterns, to ever run out of money.”

What changed for Andrea was seeing her finances as one complete picture. “I can now spend it in a planful, thoughtful way,” she said.

Moving from Saving to Spending Takes Practice

Shifting from saver to spender is harder than it sounds when saving has been a habit for 50 years.

After Andrea realized she had enough, she still had to adjust. She claimed Social Security benefits. She paid off her mortgage and gave herself room to travel, give, and spend comfortably without constantly tracking every dollar.

Retirement Planning Is Different When You Handle Everything Yourself

Most retirement planning content Andrea sees focuses on couples, but she built her plan as a single woman. There was no second income to help during lean years, and no partner to share decisions or make up the difference if something went wrong.

That requires a different kind of discipline. There is no one to pressure you into panic-selling, and no competing priorities pulling the budget in different directions. Andrea’s ability to stay invested through volatility and create a plan that matched her spending habits came from owning the entire process from the beginning.

Her message to other single people trying to understand their own finances is simple: “You can still do it.”

Many people building a financial life alone have never seen the full picture. If you are unsure whether your numbers are as strong as they seem, the Boldin Planner turns what you have saved into what you can spend. Put everything in and see the complete picture.