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Old 08-09-2009, 04:20 PM
 
Location: Conejo Valley, CA
12,460 posts, read 20,024,761 times
Reputation: 4365

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The baby boomers as a whole seem to refuse to retire, or at least anytime soon. I wonder whether what effect this will have on the unemployment rate. From my experience with boomers, there seems to be a few reasons why they are avoiding retirement.

1.) Retiring means you're "old" and boomers want to believe they are forever young.
2.) Many have not saved enough for retirement and the crappy equity markets over the last decade (if you bought and hold over the last 10 years you would have not gained much) have made their projections rather inaccurate. As a result they must continue to work.
3.) Many seem to think that their lifestyle during retirement was going to be the same as when they were 50 something, on two incomes and had all the kids out of the house.
4.) Many kept moving up in the housing market as a result they still owe a significant mortgage on their home. The collapse in the real estate market in many cases seems to have eaten awhile a good deal of their equity. They can longer sell their McMansion and purchase a smaller home cash. Many don't seem interested in purchasing a small home in the first place...(i.e, don't want to reduce their standard of living).

Anyhow, so if they continue to avoid retirement will it cause an elevated unemployment rate for some time? Will it make it more difficult for the younger generations to get employed?
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Old 08-09-2009, 05:17 PM
 
Location: rain city
2,957 posts, read 12,697,731 times
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I should retire? Hahahahahaaaa....

I've got one kid in college and one whose student loans I'll be paying off for some time to come. We own no home. We do not have a car. Our 401K's etc. are worth less now than they were 10 years ago when the kids were still young. The three people in our little family currently have 1 1/2 jobs.

I'm gonna retire on what?

"Lifestyle"? Hahahahahaaaa. You try hauling kitty litter and all the groceries home in a backpack at my age.....

Last edited by azoria; 08-09-2009 at 05:58 PM..
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Old 08-09-2009, 05:59 PM
 
Location: On the Chesapeake
45,083 posts, read 60,146,874 times
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My, my, my such anger at the people who fed, educated, clothed, housed and kept you safe (meaning no draft) while giving you an unrivaled standard of living with more stuff than you'll ever need or probably use.

If you'll do some math you should realize that the vast majority of us "greedy" boomers aren't even close to retirement age. It's a vanity of your generation that thinks retirement will happen at forty. Newsflash sport-it won't.

As it is I could have retired this year at 55 but staying until 60 increases my pension by just under 80%. I'm not stupid. I am also in the same house bought in my early 30s, nearly paid off, didn't trade up, down or sideways. My experience once again tells me that the generations immediately behind me are the McMansion buyers. And I still have a kid or two in the house so there goes another premise.

I'll probably retire at 62, but will most likely do something else dealing with natural resources-possibly lobbying-so I'll continue to do my part to give you a reason to whine.


Just a note so you don't think you've had an epiphany-my generation complained about the WWII generation not retiring and keeping unemployment high.

Now get back to work after you hit Facebook to complain about the old fart on CD. Your work is very important to my retired life-style, FICA you know.
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Old 08-09-2009, 06:48 PM
 
Location: Great State of Texas
86,052 posts, read 84,281,002 times
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If they are lucky enough to be still working then it's possible they are staying longer to make up for lost 401K values.
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Old 08-09-2009, 08:03 PM
 
5,760 posts, read 11,515,629 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id View Post

Anyhow, so if they continue to avoid retirement will it cause an elevated unemployment rate for some time? Will it make it more difficult for the younger generations to get employed?
That all sounds very S U B J E C T I V E.

Any objective measurements on this?



ahhh, just razzing you, kid.
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Old 08-09-2009, 08:05 PM
 
Location: ✶✶✶✶
15,218 posts, read 30,470,197 times
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Is it that they don't want to retire or they're financially incapable of retiring? (Speaking of the ones that are actually of "retirement age," whatever that may be.)
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Old 08-09-2009, 08:35 PM
 
8,317 posts, read 29,412,391 times
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A little history here: when Social Security started in the 1930's, the retirement age was 65. All fine and dandy except the median lifespan was not much more than that. So, if you were lucky enough to reach 65, you got a small retirement from Uncle Sam. Most people just worked until they dropped--because Social Security was only meant as a supplement to retirement and a lot of people did not get any other pension--so they kept on working. Of course, most people in that era did not carry debt, especially as they approached old age--so working for less money or for less hours was not as great a hardship.

Over the generations since, life span has increased, people's idea of what is a livable income and lifestyle has inflated, but retirement age has not increased. So, in many ways, the Baby Boom generation is the most coddled, materially well-endowed generation of any. The problem, which is now becoming woefully evident, is that the Baby Boomers as a group really couldn't afford it. The deficiency shows in a mountain of debt--some held by the Boomers themselves, some shifted to the federal debt, some lying in waiting as massive unfunded liabilities to be borne by subsequent generations.

Now, I happen to be a Boomer, albeit a financially responsible one who believes in living below one's means. Unfortunately, that lifestyle is not a popular one--not with the Boomers, and even less so in many of their spoiled progeny. Part of what is happening in the current economy is that unsustainable lifestyle is now coming to an end. For many Boomers, it is going to mean a much more austere retirement than they figured upon, or no retirement at all. For those that are following, it will mean not only that, but a lower material standard of living--probably for their whole lives. I suspect the Baby Boomers will be the last generation for a long time that actually managed to get away with living beyond its means.

As for the employment thing, yeah, a lot of Baby Boomers are going to have to keep working, just like a lot of generations that preceded us had to.
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Old 08-09-2009, 09:46 PM
 
1,960 posts, read 4,650,938 times
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I can attribute my underemployment directly to the boomers' unwillingness to retire. My shop's positions are filled with boomers and they're just not going to let it go. As it stands I'm on track on remaining underemployed well into my thirties by the time they reach mandatory retirement age. For these boomers to have had the level of underemployment and inflation-adjusted paycut that I have at my age would have been blasphemy. A college education was after all their meal ticket to the life. It was a mere highschool diploma in the quest for mine.

The reality is that Gen Y is going to have to learn to do without. Boomers complain about late X and beyond's lack of corporate loyalty, when in reality it was the boomers themselves that sold the employment marketplace up the river in a proverbial "up and fold the ladder" career progression.

If there is any reprieve, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Social security and Medicare are the ticking bomb. The boomers will make it go off. Not all of them will be underground by the time services begin to disappear. So the late boomers have much more at stake in helping X, Y and beyond figure this mess out before the proverbial "kids" get pissed off at grandpa and start crossing their arms and voting against the interest of the elderly (a matter of survival really).

My personal outlook on the matter is simple. In order for my household to remain solvent we'll have to continue living under our means. Cheap housing, paid off old 10+yr cars, kids will only be able to benefit from an in-state education or they pay for their own, staycations by default (which I happen to favor anyways), and a painfully disciplined savings rate. Many won't make it. But I'm not gonna spend the rest of my productive life complaining about the lousy hand I inherited from my parents generation. That doesn't exculpate them however, hear that.
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Old 08-09-2009, 09:50 PM
 
Location: Great State of Texas
86,052 posts, read 84,281,002 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hindsight2020 View Post
My shop's positions are filled with boomers and they're just not going to let it go.
Are they all past retirement age (62-65) ?
In your opinion why do you think they are still working ?

A lot of boomers had kids late in life compared to their parents generation and that sometimes has an effect on how long they have to work..college expenses and all.
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Old 08-09-2009, 10:26 PM
 
18,658 posts, read 33,267,745 times
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"Retirement age" is when you afford to stop working. Period.
My observation to people complaining about baby boomers is that the difference in futures isn't so much generational but rather a chasm between those who inherit something from someone and those who don't.
Even $20,000 could make the difference between school debt or not, car loan or not, down payment or not. And most people who inherit something, anything, get more than that, from my own anecdotal observations.
One needn't be from some big-deal old money family to inherit. In my area, people might inherit a paid-for house or two- or three-family house (the housing choice of lower income people) and some kind of emergency fund. For instance, a friend of mine had a father who retired from the Coast Guard, who then worked a number of years as a doorman. There was a paid-for house in Florida (estimated at $120K at the time) and a savings account of $60K. These assets were split three ways among the three daughters. Not enough to retire, but certainly a great kickstart for many things in life.

I say this as someone who never heard of inheritance until I was fairly old in adult life, and did some checking to make sure I couldn't inherit a parent's debt. (answer is no, if you inherit no assets).

Oh,and by the way, not all baby boomers went to or completed college, or had cheap tuition or plentiful jobs. I quit college with loans after two boring years, and entered the job market in a major recession (1973).
The actual baby boomers are currently aged 52-64. The actual demographic "boom," where each birth cohort was bigger than the previous year, was approximately 1946-1957. To me, all other designations of "generation this or that" are marketing tools, not demographic facts.
(Disclaimer: I was born in 1953).
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