So Money episode 1870, what it's like to retire on almost nothing but Social Security.

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Welcome to So Money.

We felt like it was important after having profiled people who retire after saving a million,

$2 million, a half a million dollars.

We felt like it was important to look at people who retire after basically having saved almost nothing.

And that's where this one came in because thanks to Social Security, the vast majority

of people in this country do actually have a retirement income.

Welcome to So Money, everyone. I'm Farnush Tarabi. If you're listening to this show, my guess is you care about your future, your financial future. You've already started to look at retirement and what it's going to cost. Imagine, though, you arrive at

retirement and you have nothing saved. Zero. What do you do? This is our show today. We're going to talk to

one reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Ann Turgisand, who met up with a number of Americans across

the country living on just their social security paychecks. They had zero saved. They had otherwise zero

dollars saved for retirement, and they're not working in their retirement to supplement their

income. How are they doing that? According to Ann's article, in 1940, when the program was just

launched, Social Security replaced just over 20% of a typical workers' income at age 65, probably because

they had a pension. As Congress enhanced the benefits, that figure rose to about 50% in the early

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