Carter eschews wealth and resides modestly in his Georgia hometown
PLAINS, Ga. — Jimmy Carter finishes his Saturday night dinner, salmon and broccoli casserole on a paper plate, flashes his famous toothy grin and calls playfully to his wife of 72 years, Rosalynn: “C’mon, kid.”
She laughs and takes his hand, and they walk carefully through a neighbor’s kitchen filled with 1976 campaign buttons, photos of world leaders and a couple of unopened cans of Billy Beer, then out the back door, where three Secret Service agents wait.
They do this just about every weekend in this tiny town where they were born — he almost 94 years ago, she almost 91. Dinner at their friend Jill Stuckey’s house, with plastic cups of ice water and one glass each of bargain-brand chardonnay, then the half-mile walk home to the ranch house they built in 1961.
On this south Georgia summer evening, still close to 90 degrees, they dab their faces with a little plastic bottle of No Natz to repel the swirling clouds of tiny bugs. Then they catch each other’s hands again and start walking, the former president in jeans and clunky black shoes, the former first lady using a walking stick for the first time.
The 39th president of the United States lives modestly, a sharp contrast to his successors, who have left the White House to embrace power of another kind: wealth.
No ambition to ‘be rich’
Since Gerald Ford, other former presidents, and sometimes their spouses, routinely earn hundreds of thousands of dollars on speeches.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Carter says over dinner. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich.”
Carter was 56 when he returned to Plains from Washington. He says his peanut business, held in a blind trust during his presidency, was $1 million in debt, and he was forced to sell.
“We thought we were going to lose everything,” says Rosalynn, sitting beside him.
Carter decided that his income would come from writing, and he has written 33 books, about his life and career, his faith, Middle East peace, women’s rights, aging, fishing, woodworking, even a children’s book written with his daughter, Amy Carter, called “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer.”
With book income and the $210,700 annual pension all former presidents receive, the Carters live comfortably. But his books have never fetched the massive sums commanded by more recent presidents.
Carter has been an ex-president for 37 years, longer than anyone else in history. His simple lifestyle is increasingly rare in this era of President Donald Trump, a billionaire with gold-plated sinks in his private jet, Manhattan penthouse and Mar-aLago estate.
Carter is the only president in the modern era to return full time to the home he lived in before he entered politics — a two-bedroom ranch house assessed at $167,000, less than the value of the armored Secret Service vehicles parked outside.
Carter costs U.S. taxpayers less than any other former president, according to the General Services Administration, with a total bill for him in the current fiscal year of $456,000, covering pensions, an office, staff and other expenses.
That’s less than half the $952,000 budgeted for George H.W. Bush; the three other living ex-presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — cost taxpayers more than $1 million each per year.
Carter doesn’t have federal retirement health benefits because he worked for the government for four years — less than the five years needed to qualify, according to the GSA. He says he receives health benefits through Emory University, where he has taught for 36 years.
The federal government pays for an office for each ex-president. Carter’s, in the Carter Center in Atlanta, is the least expensive, at $115,000 this year.
Defined by hometown
Plains is a tiny circle of Georgia farmland, a mile in diameter, with its center at the train depot that served as Carter’s 1976 campaign headquarters. About 700 people live here, 150 miles due south of Atlanta, in a place that is a living museum to Carter.
The Jimmy Carter National Historic Site is essentially the entire town, drawing nearly 70,000 visitors a year and $4 million into the county’s economy.
Carter has used his post-presidency to support human rights, global health programs and fair elections worldwide through his Carter Center, based in Atlanta. He has helped renovate 4,300 homes in 14 countries for Habitat for Humanity, and with his own hammer and tool belt, he will be working on homes for low-income people in Indiana this month. But Plains defines him. After dinner, the Carters step out of Stuckey’s driveway, with two Secret Service agents walking close behind.
Carter’s gait is a little unsteady these days, three years after a diagnosis of melanoma on his liver and brain. But now, after radiation and chemotherapy, Carter says he is cancer-free.
In October, he will become the second president to reach 94; George H.W. Bush turned 94 in June. These days, Carter is sharp, funny and reflective.
When Carter looks back at his presidency, he says he is most proud of “keeping the peace and supporting human rights,” the Camp David accords that brokered peace between Israel and Egypt, and his work to normalize relations with China. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. “I always told the truth,” he says. Carter has been notably quiet about Trump. But on this night, two years into Trump’s term, he’s not holding back.
“I think he’s a disaster,” Carter says. “In human rights and taking care of people and treating people equal.”
“The worst is that he is not telling the truth, and that just hurts everything,” Rosalynn says.
Carter says he believes the nation’s “ethical and moral values” are intact and that Americans eventually will “return to what’s right and what’s wrong, and what’s decent and what’s indecent, and what’s truthful and what’s lies.”
But, he says, “I doubt if it happens in my lifetime.”
Still teaching Sunday school
Every other Sunday, Carter teaches Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church on the edge of town, and people line up the night before to get a seat. This Sunday morning happens to be his 800th lesson since he left the White House.
He asks where people have come from, and from the pews they call out at least 20 states, Canada, China, Denmark and Kenya.
He tells the congregation that he’s planning a trip to Montana to go fishing with his friend Ted Turner, and that he’s going to ride in an autogiro — a sort of mini-helicopter — with his son Jack.
“I’m still fairly active,” he says, and everyone laughs.
The Carters’ one-story house sits behind a government-owned fence that once surrounded Richard Nixon’s house in Key Biscayne, Fla.
The Carters have deeded the property to the National Park Service, which will one day turn it into a museum.
In a remodeling effort not long ago, the couple knocked down a bedroom wall themselves.
“By that time, we had worked with Habitat so much that it was just second nature,” Rosalynn says.
Rosalynn Carter practices tai chi and meditates in the mornings, while her husband writes in his study or swims in the pool.
They have no chef and they cook for themselves, often together. They make their own yogurt.
On this summer morning, Rosalynn mixes pancake batter and sprinkles in blueberries grown on their land. Carter cooks them on the griddle. Then the 39th president of the United States does the dishes.