You’re over 60 and suddenly jobless. How do you stay afloat until you really want to retire? That’s what Janice Young, an interior designer near Minneapolis, needed to know. After losing her $100,000-a-year job last September, Young, 63 and divorced, began to doubt she’d find a comparable position. Should she take a pension she was due? Tap the $560,000 in her traditional and Roth IRAs? Claim Social Security? “I’m sure I’m not the only divorced woman in her early 60s with these questions,” she wrote.

The first thing Young had to do was cut her spending. Her healthy-sized emergency fund was dwindling at the rate of $4,500 a month. Some expenses, like her mortgage and car payment, were nonnegotiable. But she put a stop to discretionary home improvement projects, eating out, traveling and—reluctantly—charitable donations. She also contacted the Affordable Care Act exchange for health insurance pricing; with no income, she would qualify for a zero-premium plan in Minnesota once her old insurance ran out. Young lowered her monthly spending to about $3,000.

The second challenge was harder. If she wasn’t working, where should she pull money from? Any source she might pick—her pension, Social Security, traditional IRA, Roth IRA or a lower-paying job, if she could get one—would affect her financial security, health care costs and tax burden. It’s complicated, said financial planner Wade Pfau, author of Retirement Planning Guidebook.

To help Young, I also consulted financial advisers Isabel Barrow of Edelman Financial Engines and Michelle Patello of TIAA. Here’s what they and Pfau recommended.

1. Grab the steady pension. Barrow found that waiting to take the pension wouldn’t result in a higher benefit. That gave Young two options: a $1,000 initial monthly payment that might possibly increase but never decline, or a $1,350 initial payout that could fall in future years if the underlying fund underperformed. Based on Young’s good health and expected longevity, Barrow recommended the $1,000 option.

2. Tap the traditional IRA. In general, the longer you can let a Roth IRA grow, the better, Patello explained, since withdrawals, unlike those from a traditional IRA, are tax-free. That said, Young would need to keep her taxable income under $29,160 this year in order to maintain free health insurance through the state of Minnesota. Because she would already be getting $12,000 from her pension but would also get the 2024 standard IRS deduction of $14,600, she could pull $31,700 from her traditional IRA. After taxes, she would have a little over $3,200 a month—enough for her lower monthly needs. If she were hit with unexpected expenses, she could pull money tax-free from the Roth.

3. Find a job. The benefit would be huge, Barrow noted. Replacing even a fraction of her former salary, when combined with the pension, would allow Young to stop pulling from savings, leave the retirement accounts alone and delay Social Security, allowing her benefit to grow by up to 8 percent each year until age 70.

After months of job hunting, Young had good news. In late February, she landed full-time work as a kitchen designer at a home improvement chain—with a salary of about $46,000 and a health plan. She’ll tap her pension, because waiting won’t boost the balance, but she’ll put off Social Security until at least 67 and let her IRAs continue to grow. Young is happy she has a plan to fall back on in case she’s jobless again. “I know I do have options,” she says. “I’m going to be OK.”