Save yourself, Michal Lisowski
Taking Social Security benefits early
Many Americans Opting To Take Social Security Before Full Retirement Age
- more than 4 in 10 Americans who are 50 and over say they’ll dip into the program before reaching full retirement age.
- 44 percent report Social Security will be their biggest source of income during their retirement years.
- The average age at which people expect to start or have started collecting Social Security benefits is 64. Just 9 percent said they would wait until after they turned 70.
- the average American still retires relatively early, at age 64 for men and age 62 for women, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
- a quarter of workers over 50 say they never plan to retire, a sentiment more common among lower-income workers.
Magazine covers
Rough day (Deadwood)
Third anniversary of plant-based diet
In Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat, science writer Marta Zaraska does a great job of exposing these claims as myths.
“Vegetarian animals ranging from gorillas to water deer, she reports, have bigger, sharper canines than we do; our canines aren’t specially meant for processing meat. What we lack dentally is more important, in fact, than what we have. Gently open a (calm) dog’s jaw, and there at the back will be the carnassial teeth, “blade-like and sharp and perfect for slicing meat.” Lions and tigers, racoons and house cats — all carnivores — have them too. We don’t. All the high-quality amino acid proteins we require are readily available in plants, Zaraska says, listing soy, buckwheat, quinoa and potatoes as examples.”
“Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine even notes that when people switch from meat-eating to plant-eating, their intake of vitamins and other nutrients improves.”