The volatility in the stock market over the last week or so has a lot of people checking their 401(k) statements. Financial experts suggest they shouldn’t worry too much about a bad day here and there. In fact, one reason that we may be heading to a retirement predicament that will make the student loan challenges look like chump change is that people panicked during the Great Recession. They sold low and put their money into low-yielding safe investments. Better to just ride it out.
But as it stands right now 45 percent of baby boomers have no retirement savings and 28 percent of those who have saved anything have less than $100,000 on hand.
A couple of years ago I wrote a story for Isthmus about how baby boomers could ease off this earthly plane with a social conscience. The other day I was asked to reprise that in a brief talk for a local group, so it gave me the chance to dust off my November 2017 article and to do a little research to update things.
Here are some not-so-fun facts that should get your attention. You can find more glad tidings like this from the Population Research Board.
- In 1900 in the U.S., there were almost 14 people of working age for every person of retirement age. Today that same ratio is about four to one and by mid-century it is expected to be below three to one. In other words, there will be only three workers to support each person who is, or at least could be, retired.
- In 1960 only one-out-of-10 Americans was over 65. In 2060 that’s projected to be one-out-of-four Americans.
- In 1970 Medicare and Social Security consumed four percent of the Gross National Product. By 2050 that is projected to be 12 percent, or three times as much.
- Since 1988 obesity rates (an indicator of public health) for men ages 65 to 74 have gone from about one in four to one in three and for women it’s even worse.
To sum it all up, American society is growing older, less healthy and less financially secure.
So, what’s a boomer to do?
Two things come immediately to mind: stay productive and stay (or become) healthy.
There are lots of ways to be productive. Staying in the workforce by just keeping a job you love is one obvious way to do that and, with so many boomers with inadequate retirement savings, a lot of us will have to keep working at jobs even if we don’t love them. But there are also second careers, part-time employment and volunteering.
I used to worry about boomers not getting off the ladder and blocking the way up for generations behind us and that can still be a concern in individual situations. But as a whole the numbers strongly suggest that it’s almost certainly better to stay in the workforce — and keep paying taxes — if that’s what you want to do. And if you have to do it, well, at least you can feel better about it.
Staying healthy is mostly a matter of just moving and having a purpose in life. That’s according to Dr. Alexis Eastman, a UW gerontologist who I interviewed for that 2017 story. She suggests aerobic exercises like walking, swimming and running (for those who still have the knees for it) as a way of warding off cognitive issues. She says that regular exercise has been shown to reduce the chances of dementia by half. For avoiding falls — the scourge of older people — she recommends dual task exercises like yoga, tai chai and cross fit training.
Eastman also says that mental health plays a big role in overall fitness and that having a sense of purpose (which gets back to staying productive) after ending a career is crucial.
As for diet, she follows the Michael Pollan rule: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
As a rule, generations seem to fall into disdain in the eyes of their children but are held in reverence by their grandkids. The materialistic, sell-out generation morphed into “The Greatest Generation” just before they started checking out in big numbers. And I suspect something similar will happen to boomers. We’re held in low regard as we cling to powerful positions, but as we start to loosen our grip and as our grandkids start to mature, we’ll look better. New York Times columnist and fellow boomer David Brooks gives his generation a grade of B and that seems about right.
And that leads to one final point. The fastest-growing group of voters is not millennials. It’s people over 65. That’s in part because so many of the 75 million boomers are hitting that magic age but also because older people vote a lot more reliably. Millennials and boomers each make up about 75 million people, but two-thirds of eligible voters over 65 voted in the 2018 elections while the rate for the population as a whole was just over 50 percent.
That gives boomers outsized political influence. It’s probably older voters and not younger generations who will determine if we get another four years of what we’ve got now.
