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Are you thinking of retiring soon? Perhaps earlier than you had planned years ago? A potential hurdle could be the incentives set up by the Social Security Administration - they calculate your benefits to reward you for staying in the workforce.
But if you are looking to take an early retirement, you're not alone.
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In the first 15 months of the COVID pandemic (March 2020-May 2021), about 2.5 million Americans retired. That was about twice the number of people who retired in 2019. This means there were essentially 1.2 million fewer people in the workforce over the age of 55 than would otherwise be expected.
First, find out what Social Security benefits you can expect
For anyone born in 1943 or later, your full retirement age, as defined by the Social Security Administration, is between age 66 and 67, based on your birth year. If you're contemplating retiring before that, it's important to know that the Social Security program has been orchestrated to incentivize beneficiaries to delay claiming benefits. Specifically:
If you start taking benefits at age 62, your Retirement Benefit will shrink by 25% to 30%, depending on your birth year. That's because your lifetime annual benefits are decreased by approximately 8% for each year prior to your full retirement age you start to claim them.Conversely, your lifetime annual benefits increase by 8% for each year past your full retirement year if
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Ethereum, the world's second-most valuable digital currency by market capitalization, completed a long-awaited upgrade to its system on September 15.
The move, known in the cryptocurrency community as "The Merge", is expected to slash energy costs and lay the groundwork for more use of crypto technology in mainstream applications, including finance.
The upgrade was one of the most eagerly anticipated events in crypto's history. But the process is complicated. Here's what to know about it.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a blockchain - a publicly-viewable, distributed ledger that verifies and records all transactions on the network. The platform was conceived by Russian-born Canadian programmer, Vitalik Buterin, in 2013. What sets apart Ethereum's blockchain from Bitcoin's is that it allows users to run "smart contracts." These are computer programs stored on the blockchain that automatically perform a chain of actions when certain conditions are met. This functionality has allowed many people to build a large network of financial institutions, such as decentralized exchanges and lenders, and even other digital tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
What is ‘The Merge'?
The years-long effort has changed how transactions are verified on the Ethereum blockchain. In December 2020, Ethereum began running on two parallel blockchains, one using the legacy system to validate transactions and another blockchain using proof-of-stake for developers to test and improve. Thise merge combinesed the two blockchains into a single one using a proof-of-stake system for validations.
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