50+ Housing e-Source - 11/23/2005 (Plain Text Version)View Graphical Version | Subscribe
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Editor... In this issue: NEWSWEEK Magazine: Turning 60 — Boomers at 60"The generation that vowed to stay forever young is coming up on a major milestone. But for the 3.4 million Americans who were born in 1946, retirement is a distant prospect, and life still holds plenty of promise and surprises. They've been hippies and yuppies; and now it's the time of the 'abbies': aging baby boomers." NEWSWEEK magazine featured Boomers at 60 in its weekly cover story in the Nov. 14 issue: Turning 60. "In honor of their latest milestone, which ushers them into the fraught decade of their 60s, NEWSWEEK is taking a fresh look at the generation that vowed to stay forever young, through their own eyes and those who have made a career of studying them. They face concerns about finances, their health and the state of the world, but their exuberance is undiminished. It's not as if they're getting old." NEWSWEEK examines how baby boomers really do feel young and live young: "Baby boomers literally think they're going to die before they get old," says J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich Partners, which found in one study that boomers defined "old age" as starting three years after the average American was dead." While the average life expectancy of this group is 82.3, many think that advances in medicine will help them live past 100. This feeling of youth and vigor also means that "they reinvent themselves every three to five years. A boomer could be a brand-new dad, or a grandparent. This "life stage" concept is the latest buzzword in consulting. "If you're marketing to boomers, you should start staying away from age," says Jim Gilmartin, president of Coming of Age, Inc. Another key in marketing to boomers is to realize that they do not "want to keep going to the same office or classroom or shop every day." Many already have made major career changes. "'That's mind-boggling," says Dychtwald, whose latest book is The Power Years: A User's Guide to the Rest of Your Life. "You have corporate CEOs who want to be schoolteachers, and marketing managers who'd really rather run a coffee shop, bookkeepers who want to join the Peace Corps. They'll work fewer hours or only eight months a year, and they won't be as concerned about having the biggest office or the most lucrative job. It will be more important to do something they enjoy.'" The article also discussed how retirement is changing all notions of what we thought in the past - from home location to home size. The story points out that "Del Webb, a longtime leader in building what used to be called retirement communities, recently opened a new 'Sun City' in the frost belt near Chicago, for boomers who want the trappings of retirement without the inconvenience of quitting their jobs." Del Webb has found that two-thirds of their "boomer customers plan to keep working, floor plans have expanded to accommodate home offices, and the company increasingly has moved its leisure activities and classes to after business hours." Leisure activities. The drive for a new career. Feeling young at 60, 70, 80... "There's the boomer credo in a nutshell: there are good years left. A 60-year-old who expects to live to 100 is only halfway through adulthood. They are intent on refuting Pablo Picasso's maxim that 'one starts to get young at the age of 60, and then it's too late.' For boomers, it's never too late." For more information or to contact us directly, please visit www.NAHB.org | ©2005, National Association of Home Builders |