Dale Gravelle shows off her credit card statements that shows that she owes some $22,500. -AP

The reasons vary, but experts say some retirees are overwhelmed by rising medical expenses or find that Social Security and their pensions don't stretch far enough. Those who lost jobs before they were ready to retire never quite caught up.

Dollie Hawkins, an 84-year-old retiree living in Miami, dates her financial problems to 1982, when the company she worked for went out of business and she lost her full-time nursing position. She said she looked long and hard for another permanent job, but could only get short-term private duty work.

"You fill out applications and they tell you, 'We don't need anyone now,' " she recalled. "It's not that. It's the age thing."

Hawkins, a widow, said that as bills "began to crowd up on me," she turned to credit cards and ran up some $11,000 in debt. She's trying to pay it down, if slowly, from her Social Security benefit and meager savings.

"Sometimes I wished I could have walked away from it, but I wasn't raised that way and I feel responsible," Hawkins said.

The rapidly rising cost of health care and medications is also clobbering some seniors.

Stuart D. Zimring, president of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, said he's seeing more older couples who get into financial problems because "cash flow is not keeping pace with the cost of living, particularly the cost of health care."

And because seniors are proud and protective of their independence, they often try to hide their financial distress from their families.

"In most cases, the kids don't know what's happening until the crisis occurs," said Zimring, whose practice is in North Hollywood, Calif. "Mom and dad are running up the bills for hospitalization, keeping up on the condo, medication. Then mom has a stroke and dad starts doing a Chinese fire drill and the kids get called in and don't know where to begin."

Just how big a problem is elder debt?