Yet Ms. Willig, too, has been buffeted by the economy. Last year she had to leave her assisted living home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when the owner abruptly announced plans to close it. (A few residents are still living there, under degraded conditions.)

Reared in Brownsville during the Depression, Ms. Willig was always cautious with money. She and her husband took the family on vacations, but in tent trailers rather than hotels. They sent their four children to college, but to state schools. “There were times when to write the check we had to wait for the next income,” she said. “But I really don’t think I was worrying that much about it. He tried to keep me informed, but I really didn’t pay that much attention.”

When her friends from the Park Slope center moved to a comparable building in Lower Manhattan, she chose Sheepshead Bay instead, in part because it was less expensive. She misses her friends.

On a recent morning in her tidy one-bedroom apartment, Ms. Willig talked about something she called “my dilemma.” She wore a neat T-shirt that she had put off ironing because it hurts her to bend to plug in the iron, the sort of small task that is getting harder every year. Her dilemma was whether to endure the pain or hire an attendant, which can grow increasingly expensive. She did not want to outlive her savings.

“Then I think, what do I need all this money for?” she said. “My daughter says, Ma, you never know what’s going to take place in your life, which is true. So I force myself to take care of the apartment. And I’m able to, thank God. It’s not as neat as I’d like it to be.”

For now, she was secure, she said.

Sun poured into the apartment, and the bay shimmered outside. “I didn’t think I’d be so comfortable,” she said. “It shocks me.”