It is so interesting how Baby Boomers have been classified as one large 76 million cohort of the US Population. There is a tremendous amount of information written about us as a single unit. I personally get frustrated that every industry wants to tap into the Boomers’ powerful spending abilities, and yet, few really “get us” at all.
With an 18 year span of ages, Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are hardly alike. Some of our points of view are similar or quite the same, but where we are in our life, how we approach a situation, and what we choose to focus on can be significantly different from one another. In my case, I am a “lagging edge” Boomer – born in 1961, so am just turning 50 this year. While I have officially become a member of AARP (that was quite a shock!), I am far from retirement. One of my daughters is a sophomore in college, the other a freshman in high school. My day-to-day life is consumed with running a small business, managing a household, and raising these two wonderful daughters. I am far from needing to apply for Social Security.
And yet, I am a Boomer, lumped into the same general “getting ready to retire” bucket as those much older. Just like my 62-year old and 65-year old colleagues and relatives. They are, in fact, making very real decisions about Social Security, Medicare, employment. They are welcoming grandchildren into the world. They are facing the reality that whatever savings they have been able to amass while living a full life will now need to sustain them for many years to come. I am helping my 9th grader edit papers on the Medieval Ages and constantly reminding her to practice her flute. Not really the same focus to my days as the “leading edge” boomers who are on the cusp of retiring.
These differences are vast. So, I wanted to start this blog as a way to try to capture who Boomers are as individuals…and how we each are thinking about what retirement will mean…and how we are preparing for that future time when we may not want to be working – or cannot work.
I want to explore the uniqueness of being a Boomer who is preparing for eventual retirement, and what that really means. I am looking to explore how we are thinking about retirement differently by age, by location, by life stage, by mindset. Join me as I talk to Boomers across the USA. We are all doing such interesting and diverse things as we reshape and redefine the very concept of retirement. We are, after all, racing toward older age and retirement, ready or not. And, that might just be the most common characteristic that unites all of us Boomers!
