Boomer Retirement Watch, 7Feb2011

7Feb/1112

Boomer Retirement Watch, 7Feb2011

Gen Xers wanting the old farts to get out of their way!...well, kind of. It's some sort of press release from a woman whose website name is waaaaaaay too long. [yes, I know it resolves to something shorter.] Looks like she has a book to sell.

Thing is, there's not enough of us Xers to fill all the management slots. Attached to this NYT article on trying to market/design towards the old farts who are in denial about being old farts, but really do have physical problems, is a historical demographic histogram [you'll see that the bars don't necessarily make sense in time changes, but you've got to remember the effect of immigration]. I'll pull the cross-section for the year 2010. See that 30-45 demo? That's the Xers, sandwiched between the boomers and the whiny Ys. Oh yay.

Demography of 2010

And watch out for that huge 45-55 demo [the "young" boomers]. My mother is in the "older" boomer lump of 55-65, [and if you check out the prior years and later years, you can see that mortality is outweighing immigration in those bars... they are dwindling, but slowly].

Why aren't boomers retiring on schedule? Well, duh - retirement assets have totally sucked, and the layoffs weren't kind, either.

Yet another piece on OH NOES THE BOOMERS ARE GONNA RETIRE! Well, maybe if we're lucky, they can't afford it, and they'll stay in the workforce. Woo hoo.

And here's something on "OH NOES LIVE TOO LONG"/"OH NOES TOO FAT"/"Damn, annuities are complicated and unpopular".

Boomers dealing with their parents' deaths and the financial repercussions. Yes, I've been seeing a lot of this over the past several years. The parents of the boomers are in their 70s-80s, on the whole, and that's the mode of death ages currently, if I recall correctly.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

Tagged as: boomer retirement watch, boomers Leave a comment

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serr8d
February 7th, 2011 - 08:07

Fascinating.

Another reason the older boomers don’t want to retire, I suppose, is their knowledge that these young squirts aren’t capable of handling any real pressures, having been coddled and spoiled since their births.

GET OFF OF PABLUM AND DONKEY KONG BEFORE YOU TAKE OVER MY BIDNESSES~!

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Mike
February 7th, 2011 - 08:20

There are a lot of us “mid-boomers” out there who don’t have a retirement fund other than SocSec to fall back on. I don’t expect to be collecting. And it wouldn’t be worth anything if I could manage to collect any of the money I’ve put in over the years. Reckon I’ll just keep working ’til I fall out on the job, hopefully being dead before I hit the ground like my Grandfather. Go out with my boots on, so to speak.

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Frank Keegan
February 7th, 2011 - 10:25

Worse, beleaguered citizens among the dwinding ranks of private sector workers paying for everybody else will have to ante up for bad bets made with state trust fund money. In 2009 alone that was 67 cents in taxes for every dollar decline in trust revenue, and $1.03 in taxes for every dollar in trust value lost. Our tax money at play.
http://statehousenewsonline.com/2011/02/04/ok-public-pension-gurus-put-your-houses-on-the-line-not-ours/

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enoch_root
February 7th, 2011 - 12:21

what is it again I like about the Boomer Generation? Is it the selfishness, consumerism, mainstreaming of drug abuse, broken marriages, “alternative” lifestyles, abortion-on-demand, Viagra babies, or the infinite wisdom of shitting where we all have to sleep?

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- jefferson101
  February 7th, 2011 - 14:05
  
  I know some chuckleheads of that stripe among every Generation that’s old enough to vote.
  
  Just because you have apparently been tramautized at one time or another by some fool is no reason to tar everyone with the same brush, you know.
  
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  - enoch_root
    February 7th, 2011 - 17:45
    
    Traumatized? Look – the Generation we are speaking of can only be spoken about in generalities. And the generalities from where I sit are pretty obvious. No personal offense intended. But Boomers, in general of course, have done more harm then good. Tell me I am wrong.
    
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    - jefferson101
      February 7th, 2011 - 19:50
      
      Very well, Sir.
      
      It does so happen that I can tell you that you are wrong. Let’s pursue your previous list for a moment or so.
      
      Selfishness and “consumerism” are in the eye of the beholder, more often than not. Do you want my analysis of your Generation’s lifestyle choices? I don’t see any disavowal of those things showing up, unless you want to wave the Green Party at me as an example. And they just want the rest of us to die so they can go on without feeling guilty because there are too many people damaging Mother Gaea.
      
      Mainstreaming of drug abuse? You may have us on that one. Call me libertarian if you will, but I’m not sure that the mainstreaming of drug abuse has caused nearly as many problems as the “War on Drugs” has. YMMV on that one, and I’ll debate either side of the argument. I don’t like it, but I don’t know how one cures it sensibly, either.
      
      Broken marriages? I can’t control anyone’s except mine, and I’ve only got a half-interest in this one. But apparently my Wife doesn’t believe in Divorce either, since we’re still at it since 1973. Again, I don’t see any reduction in the follow-on generations, unless you think that shacking up is preferable to getting married in the first place. (I don’t, but anecdotes are not data. A lot of the younger folks do seem to think it’s just fine.)
      
      Alternative lifestyles I’ll watch go by. I don’t have two hours to devote to that one. Suffice to say that I don’t give a flying flip what anyone does in their own house behind closed doors and with pulled curtains. I don’t know, don’t care, and don’t want to find out. (That includes heterosexual folks, BTW.) But if someone insists on telling me about it, they may not like the way I respond.
      
      Abortion on demand? The way I count, the oldest Baby Boomer in the United States was 27 years old when Roe-v-Wade was decided. Mostly half of the Boomers were not yet of voting age. Explain to me, if you would, how that one is our fault. Inquiring minds would love to know!!
      
      Viagra babies? You threw that one right past me. There have always been randy old men out there, regardless of the availability of drugs. There were Civil War widows collecting pensions from the .Gov well into the 1990′s, and are probably still a few around. You could look it up. That one’s not anything new at all.
      
      As far as the infinite wisdom involved in crapping in our own nests? I need some clarification on that one. Are you talking environmentally or in general, because I would respond slightly differently to either, and again, I don’t have two hours right now.
      
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    - Devon
      February 9th, 2011 - 22:55
      
      You’re wrong.
      
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enoch_root
February 7th, 2011 - 21:17

Consumerism, broken marriages, mainstreaming of alternative lifestyles, and abortion on demand…

There is this silly thing about generational wisdom. And generational wisdom normally involves taking one’s inheritance and discerning those aspects of the cumulative wisdom of the culture which are worth lopping off, improving upon, and or leaving be.

My argument for the question you pose as to why the generation(s) in your wake haven’t retraced your generations steps, rewound the tape, hit the tivo… you know, fall “back” and reclaim the Greatest Generation’s social mores.

But that it were that simple.

When the chain is broken and the Wisdom of the Ages is scorned, ridiculed, and abused to such a wholesale extent… when one generation decides it knows better about everything and decides to forsake future generations, giving not one care about passing on that Wisdom that was entrusted to it, well then it is safe to say that that Wisdom… that gift given on loan… is in real danger of being lost. Like a Library burned to the ground.

That is your answer.

The Baby Boomers knew better. About. Everything. Always. Well, thanks be to God for that! Seems to have turned out real well.

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jefferson101
February 7th, 2011 - 21:49

Spoiled and self indulgent? Yeah. Maybe we were. But maybe we didn’t figure that we’d be around when the bill came due, either.

Sorry, Sir, but you did not grow up in the era that I did. Somewhere in late 1957 or early 1958, while at Toul AFB in France, the USG, in it’s infinite wisdom, issued Dog-Tags to all of us dependents. Not that they would have done much good, since we were sitting on Ground Zero. That’s how I grew up. Here in the States, they had the cute little duck and cover drills.

I was first exposed to them in 1962. Until then, I wasn’t anywhere that would have done any good. By the time I saw the flash, I’d have been vaporized anyway. It took me a good while to figure out that I could have a Savings Account at a Bank and have a reasonable chance of withdrawing the money.

Whatever….. You had to be there, or it doesn’t make sense.

And I’m sorry, but no. We didn’t receive the Holy Grail, and whiz in it. Some folks didn’t bother to teach their children as well as others did.

As noted, I’ve been married exactly once, and that’s an ongoing thing. I’ve been gainfully employed since 1967, according to my Social Security report. Other than 12 weeks of unemployment benefits since then, I’ve been paying my taxes regularly.

The World my Parents deposited me in was hardly all sunshine and lollypops. A fair chunk of my generation didn’t learn from their elders, or learned from the wrong ones, and haven’t done too well. Another group of us did learn, and have managed to get along in the world.

My family went from 1976 to 1996 as a single-income household. My comment on why my Wife didn’t go back to work was that “If I wanted my children raised by the Babysitter, I’d have gotten the Babysitter pregnant.”

Bemoan the passing of something that you never knew in the first place as you will. FWIW, my old Daddy is still around. (USAF/USAAF Retired. Tail-Gunner on a B-24 in CBI in WWII, and retired in 1972.) If I’m in the right mood, I will still occasionally do something in the nature of what you are doing here to him.

“Why did y’all let this happen?”

He usually just grins at me and notes that he was too busy surviving and having a life to notice a lot of it. And so it was with me, as often as not.

I never voted for the idiots, but I never could bring myself to start shooting at them either. So what would you have had me do?

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Taxpayer
February 8th, 2011 - 21:55

I’m 49 years old, but I am NOT a Boomer. History is much more accurate than sociology. The Boomers are children born to WWII-era adults. My parents were 9 years old when WWII ended–a tad bit young to have kids.

The Boomers became adults during the 1960s, old enough to serve in Vietnam. I was learning my multiplication tables in elementary school.

When I became an adult, Jimmy Carter was president, the economy was in the toilet, and gas prices were astronomical. The Boomers were long out of college and morphed into Yuppies.

In other words, I have nothing in common with Boomers–and d*mn glad about it. Ronald Reagan, not Woodstock, was the defining event of my generation.

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Christina
February 14th, 2011 - 14:06

Fact: Boomers had EVERY opportunity handed to them!!

How Boomers managed to screw this country up is beyond me. RETIRE!! I would like to work and I am tired you people sitting in your cushy little offices and taking up space. I worked my butt off, got my graduate degree (with the debt to prove it) I also take care of my family and didn’t get everything handed to me by indulgent parents..

Ahh, your mcmansions, your vacations, your shiny new cars.. you blew your incomes on nonsense and now you can’t retire.. But wait, your parents are dieing and they are leaving you with more money. Ah, now isn’t that nic, you still don’t have to account for anything.

No retirement.. Not my problem, I won’t see it either, because of the great Boomer generation. Do you hear that.. it’s the tinest violin playing in your honor.. Would you like cheese with your whine??

“Boomers; gotta love ‘em!!”

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