Many dream about living like ‘The Golden Girls.’ These women actually did it.

Rose. Blanche. Dorothy. Sophia. The iconic foursome of The Golden Girls, which is about to mark its 40th anniversary since it premiered, in 1985, had millions tuning in each week for the razor-sharp retorts, laughter and late-night kitchen talks over cheesecake. But for some women, the show meant so much more. It also served as a blueprint to create — or at least dream about — their own version of the Golden Girls, sharing household costs and companionship with like-minded women in their later years.

There’s no shortage of posts on social media from women who plan to retire just like the Golden Girls or hope to do so in the future. As one person put it on Reddit: “Golden Girls is the dream.” As divorce rates among women 50 and older surge, and given that women outlive men by nearly six years, the idea of spending your later years surrounded by girlfriends instead of on your own is a pretty compelling choice.

Pop culture historian Marie Nicola says that The Golden Girls showed that “family can be chosen” and that sharing housing was a possibility. “It was the first show that showed older women having autonomy of themselves postdivorce, post-death of their husbands at a time when the concept of women existing past menopause — that was the end of your life,” she tells Yahoo. “Golden Girls kind of flipped that script and said that’s not true. The later years can be vibrant and full of possibility.”

Cultural historian and biographer Bob Batchelor agrees, saying that the show has influenced women of all ages to rethink what getting older looks like. “Everybody is looking for some form of family,” he tells Yahoo. “This is just another evolution, whether you’re living with a group of women or in a community of women. It’s the solidarity and the community that people are looking for the most.”

So what is it really like to live like the Golden Girls? Women who’ve done their own versions of it share what they love about the experience — and what stops others from turning this dream into a reality.

‘We didn’t have all the drama’

Although they’re one housemate shy of a full foursome, Louise Machinist, Karen Bush and Jean Enright, who are now in their late 70s and early 80s, created their own Golden Girls-type living situation in Pittsburgh. Bush had been living happily on her own, but, she tells Yahoo, “I started thinking that when retirement came, there might reach a point at which living by myself was pretty isolated.”

So she asked her friend Machinist if she’d be interested in a shared housing arrangement when they both retired. Enright was also keen. The women, who met at church, were divorced and in their mid-50s at the time. “I don’t remember who, but somebody said, ‘This sounds so good, why don’t we do it now?’” recalls Bush.

Rather than rent, the three women took the bold leap of buying a property together. They found “a beautiful 1936 brick Southern house with beautiful gardens,” Machinist says. “We bought it and moved in.” They opened up a shared checking account to cover the mortgage and household expenses, and every month, each of them put in $1,500. The three women lived there from 2004 to 2015, and even wrote a book about their co-living experience, My House Our House: Living Far Better for Far Less in a Cooperative Household.

Bush says the best part of living together comes down to one word: sharing. “We certainly shared finances for the house, and that resulted in a lot of financial savings for all three of us,” she says. “It also enabled us to have services that some of us didn’t have in how we were living before,” including a cleaning service.

And then, of course, there was the companionship. In the evenings, the three of them would gather in the sun room, talking about their day “the way any family would share events in the evening,” says Machinist. They threw parties, went on a book tour and gave promotional talks. “It was an exciting, special thing,” says Machinist.

After 11 years, both Bush and Machinist were tired of cold Pittsburgh winters and were ready for something new. So they sold the house and split the proceeds. Machinist and Bush retired to Sarasota and bought a condo, where they lived together for four more years (in 2019, Bush moved in with her partner, and they lived together until he died earlier this year). Meanwhile, Enright stayed in Pittsburgh to be closer to her family and ended up meeting the love of her life and getting married. “Everybody’s lives took different twists and turns,” says Machinist, who adds that they’ve all stayed “fast friends” and still visit one another.

When asked how they feel being compared to the Golden Girls, Machinist responds: “Love it! Everyone called us that. But — we didn’t have all the drama. Only the good parts.”

‘We were all just so bonded’

For Robyn Yerian, founding the Bird’s Nest — a tiny house village in Texas for women 55 and older — was a practical, somewhat accidental and “purely selfish” decision. “My reasoning for building this community was solely to supplement my income and retirement and to have my own set of friends,” the outgoing 70-year-old tells Yahoo.

Yerian says she did everything she was supposed to do to prepare for retirement but realized the amount she’d saved wasn’t going to sustain her for the rest of her life. So she did the unexpected: She spent it all — “a no-no in the financial world,” she says — on buying some unincorporated land zoned for an RV park, about an hour outside of Dallas.

At first, it was just Yerian and a close friend who lived in their tiny homes on the property. Yerian didn’t initially set out to have only women join them, but when men would apply to live there, “they never would follow up,” she says. Everything changed after Yerian advertised a three-day workshop teaching women how to use power tools. In a short amount of time, the group of like-minded strangers felt more like friends. “We would sit around the firepit at night,” Yerian says. “These were people that I didn’t know the day before — we were all just so bonded. I said, ‘What if we did all women in this community?’ And everybody just was, ‘Oh my God, what a great idea.’”

Women from five different states — most of them previously married with grown kids — eventually sold their houses, purchased tiny homes on wheels and moved onto Yerian’s property. They pay $450 per month in rent, which includes water (electricity is billed separately and runs $50 to $70 per month at the hottest time of the year). “They’re living tiny because it’s affordable,” Yerian says. “They don’t have any overhead. This is their last hurrah.”

Out of the 12 10×30′ concrete slabs on her property, Yerian says there’s only one spot left, and it’s in high demand. “There’s probably been at least 500 people who want that spot,” she says. Yerian has no plans to go beyond a dozen people living on the property since she says it would change the dynamics of the group.

Men, at this point, would too. “As women, whenever there’s men around, we change our demeanor,” she says. “We change the way we talk. We change the way we might look. There’s something about men that want us to please them — and here, we are 100% ourselves. We don’t have to accommodate anybody.”

Yerian adds: “We’re just done with that phase of our lives.”

There are some basic rules all the women on the property follow, however. For example, Yerian says your home is your sanctuary, so there’s no unsolicited knocking on someone’s door. Texting is recommended instead. “We don’t do drama here,” she says.

Four years after moving onto the property, Yerian has no plans to leave. “If you can find a community that is supportive, non-judgmental and you have built-in friends that care about you — why wouldn’t you?” She adds: “This is where I’m going to be for the rest of my days.”

Shared housing can combat loneliness — and is a big money-saver

Suzette Bray, a licensed therapist, tells Yahoo that living with a chosen family of friends “offers emotional safety and care.” It’s also less expensive. “The economic part of it is not to be underplayed,” she says — particularly after retirement.

That’s because, along with the gender pay gap, women are also facing a retirement crisis, according to the TIAA Institute. They earn less than men and take more time off from work to care for children or aging relatives. Over a 40-year career, women face a potential loss of $400,000 because of that wage gap, according to AARP, and making less money means a smaller Social Security check. Women head into retirement with about 30% less savings than men. As a result, 25% of women ages 50 to 64 aren’t confident they have enough money to live comfortably in their retirement years, according to a 2023 AARP survey. Sharing housing and expenses can be a savvy solution for some.

Loneliness can also hit particularly hard after retiring or losing a partner. “People don’t realize how much interaction they’re getting from their work and being out and about, and then all of a sudden, they’re not with people,” Annamarie Pluhar, a shared housing consultant and author of Sharing Housing: A Guidebook for Finding and Keeping Good Housemates, tells Yahoo. “People are isolated, and it’s easy to have that happen. We live in a very difficult society for getting connected and staying connected.”

Pluhar has lived in shared housing most of her adult life, but when she briefly lived alone, she says, “There would be times when I would come into my house and think, When’s the next time I’m going to see somebody? And do I have the energy to reach out?”

Shared housing helps fill that social gap, along with having someone to count on when you need help. “Not only are your housemates providing friendship,” says Batchelor, “but there’s also a person to lean on when you need something as simple as a ride to the airport or watching your dog or cat while you’re gone. Or needing to be picked up from the eye doctor.”

‘The Golden Girls’ made it look like it was so much fun to live together.

Annamarie Pluhar

Living like the Golden Girls is easier said than done

While sharing a property like the Golden Girls is a goal for many, few make it a reality. “The Golden Girls made it look like it was so much fun to live together,” Pluhar says. But, she reminds people, it’s also “a half-hour sitcom with trained comedians and scriptwriters.”

After their book came out, Machinist, Bush and Enright gave presentations on shared housing, giving out practical advice for doing it. “People would walk up to us and they’d say, ‘I’d love to do it. I wish I could do it, but I could never do it … You’re so courageous,’” says Bush. She noticed that a number of people the women met had “lived in the same town, had the same job, had the same husband and were afraid to make a change.” Bush believes what sets the dreamers apart from the doers is having gone through a significant life change that had a positive outcome.

Machinist agrees. People worry about ending up in a bad coliving situation — “forgetting the fact that bad things can happen in anyone’s life, in any relationship,” she points out. “Bad things happen in their marriages. There’s no guarantee about marriage, but people go into it. Terrible things happen all the time. How could it be worse living with a couple of women on a temporary basis?” And Pluhar adds that it’s certainly “more fun to live with people who you like and respect than it is to live alone.”

For the women who tore a page from the Golden Girls script and made that dream a reality, the experience has been life-changing. “Women can live long, fulfilling lives, and we can partner with our friends to share costs and have a better standard of living — and we don’t have to play by the rules anymore,” says Nicola. “We can really define what the future is.”