Star Crossed Trends?

Baby boomers are frequenting restaurants in greater numbers than other population segments. At the same time, their suicide rate has also jumped (and I know that may not be the best choice of words in this instance). Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Let’s look at the numbers. According to the NPD Group study, baby boomers have increased their share of restaurant traffic by six percentage points since 2008 and Millennials have decreased their share of traffic by six percentage points. Okay, big deal. So we like to eat out and we’ve got the bucks to pay for it. But if you look at the CDC study of suicide rates in this country, from 1999 to 2010, it rose 30 percent for Americans ages 35 to 64. The sharpest rise was among men in their 50s – a 50 percent increase. For women ages 60 to 64, the rate increased 60 percent.

I’m no statistician (still have trouble with 8 x 9=72), but I see a clear correlation between eating and offing oneself. Face it. If you’re repeatedly going to Denny’s and eating something with Slam in the name, eventually you have to return home and deal with the shame of having absolutely no self-control (or for that matter, any regard for your heart health). What choice do you have? Of course you’re going to want to kill yourself – it’s the only way to stop the cycle of overeating.

Wait. There must be a better way. Oh, right. You can STOP eating out all the time and prepare some healthy meals at home. While you’re at it, you can have some quality time with your spouse and family. You know, the people who love you (hopefully) and don’t want you to end up dead because of your poor eating habits.

The folks at the CDC have a slightly more nuanced analysis of why boomers are committing suicide in greater numbers. They chalk it up to baconalia the stress of the economic downturn and the depressing outlook for boomers who had hoped to enjoy their golden years (albeit with a lot less gold than they thought). The other factor is that it’s a lot easier to kill yourself now that it was a decade ago. More drugs and poisonous substances have reduced the rate of difficulty. It’s progress, but not exactly the kind you want.

So I stand corrected. I would have gone with repeated meals at Denny’s as the root cause for suicidal thoughts and actions, but I bow to the experts. Just remember, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

The 65+ Club

Remember when you thought age 65 is when the fun begins? Well, maybe fun is the wrong word. Remember when most baby boomers thought age 65 is when they would retire? Seems like it was just yesterday but it was more like 10 or 15 years ago.

Things have changed (thanks to Bob Dylan for that line). And the more things change, the more we all need to adapt. We’re living longer for starters, and that makes it less practical to stop working at age 65. If we’re going to live well into our nineties we need to keep working to pay for that extra time. Plus, all the research indicates that the longer we stay mentally and physically engaged, the healthier we’ll be in both mind and body.

Whether it’s because we can’t afford to retire or we just want to stay engaged with our work, it has become an accepted fact that age 65 is no longer the cutoff point. Baby boomers seem to have readily adjusted to this fact of life, but what about the rest of society?

Employers are recognizing the advantages and disadvantages of older workers. We have experience but maybe are not as open to new ideas and methods. You don’t have to pay as much, but our healthcare costs are higher. Working for younger managers can older be challenging, but boomers are proving resilient when it comes to keeping up with technology and adapting to new ideas. Boomers are less about reaching the top of the heap and more about contributing something useful to the team, and that’s a good thing for any organization.

In the end, I think baby boomers will just be grateful if they can continue to be paid a decent wage for being a productive worker who still has skills and experience that are valued by their employers. We’re all going to have to make adjustments to accommodate the changes brought on by longer lifespans. Someday, today’s 30 and 40-year old managers will be facing the same issue. By that time, it may be common for people to live into their one-hundreds, and the accepted age for retirement might be 75. What goes around, comes around, so my advice to younger managers is be kind to your boomer employees, and one day some young boss will be kind to you.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Brothers On the Rock

It doesn’t take much logic to see why the natives have fondly given Newfoundland the nickname “The Rock.” Everywhere you turn, there are rocky promontories that tourists have come to see. Fog-bound ships – not so much. Plenty of vessels have been dashed to pieces at the foot of these massive precipices, but the brothers were not there to look at shipwrecks. We were in Newfoundland to hike and photograph the splendid landscapes that abound there. And to bond – whatever that might mean.

Growing up, we shared a bedroom for close to 15 years, but it had been a long time since we shared any space with that kind of confined proximity. As in maybe 50 years. On "The Rock," we were going to be sharing hotel rooms and rental homes in the outport villages where we would be with each other 24/7. I’m fairly certain that we each predicted that it would be a great trip if we didn’t kill each other.

I can only guess what my brother learned from the trip, but traveling with him for 14 days confirmed many things that I already knew. He will eat anything, particularly if it’s exotic. Cod tongue salad? Bring it on! (I ate one. It tasted like cod fish, but slimier). He can be relatively quiet, almost silent, for some long stretches and then just as suddenly get very talkative (As opposed to my ability to fill time and space with continuing monologues if necessary). His travel motto may be “more is better” or “two of everything is better than one” and his giant suitcase was proof of that. I thought he was crazy to check his gigantic bag and he thought I was nuts to have only one carry-on (I have not checked a bag since my honeymoon, 26 years ago). This difference in baggage philosophy might be about the widest gulf between us. I will say that he never lacked for gadgetry. Two sets of hiking poles, two binoculars, a suitcase just for camera and lenses, iPad, cell phones….he may have had a fax machine in there, I can’t rule it out.

What did I learn about him that I didn’t know? He snores. Loud enough to keep me awake on some occasions. He says that when I sleep, I make a noise like a death rattle. I claim it’s a form of tantric meditation. We’ll call that a draw. I also learned that our mutual interest in hiking and photography gives us a lot more in the compatibles column than in the incompatibles column.

I’ll give him the last word (other than to say that I would join him again if he invited me):

"It was a fun trip and no one got killed. You can’t ask for more."

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

It’s Sleepy Time

How did you sleep? How many of your days begin with that question? And why does our worldview now depend upon how well we slept?

Seems like the older we get, the more illusive a good night’s rest has become. Does it help to know you’re not alone? Not so much.

The experts say that each of us has a “sleep architecture,” and that as we age, this architecture begins to change. For one thing, we spend less time in deep non-REM sleep and our circadian rhythm starts shifting earlier (no one knows why). Depression, restless leg syndrome, sleep apnea, menopause – there are loads of additional reasons for sleep disorders to affect baby boomers.

Whether it’s trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, boomers are finding that what used to come easily is now a struggle. Should we go to bed later, read longer, not drink coffee, drink warm milk, get out of bed when sleep doesn’t come easily…..all good questions and nobody has the answers. The recipe for a good nights rest is different for everyone – I get that. So, for now, we rise early (so that’s empty what the world looks like at 5 am) and try to go back to sleep, or we get up and start surfing the Internet (you got a better idea of what to do at that hour?). Start trying to remember who you went to grade school or high school with and then look them on Facebook. That can kill at least an hour. Try reading a classic book that you’ve never finished (or truth be told, never even cracked open). Moby Dick or Silas Marner anyone?

To put this all in perspective, it’s said that a healthy 70 year-old may wake up as many as four times a night without it being due to disease or any of the other aforementioned causes. Maybe on one of those wake-ups you could clean the bathroom or change the Brita water filter. There are plenty of distasteful chores you can do in the middle of the night that you may not even remember you did by morning.

The good news (the silver tsunami lining, if you will) is that you ARE waking up in the morning. You may think you have a sleep disorder, but not waking up (as in DEAD), that’s a real problem!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author. 2KS8Q3D9E3E5

How’s That Again?

We all have our favorite misheard lyrics – there are even websites devoted to cataloging them. This site takes its name from one of the most often repeated “misheards” --- “scuse me while I kiss this guy” is from Purple Haze and most of us know that the Jimi Hendrix was singing “kiss the sky.”

I’ve always been fond of hearing small children recite the pledge of allegiance (you do remember when we actually did that in grade school?). Especially the part where they say, “and to the republic, for Richard Stands.”

Or the Beatles “girl with colitis goes by” rather than “girl with kaleidoscope eyes.” If you remember Iron Butterfly’s totemic song, In-A-Gadda Da Vida, you may also recall that the first time you heard it played, it sounded like “In a glob of Velveeta, honey.” And some of us thought Elton John was singing “hold me closer, Tony Danza,” which may have made sense if Danza was gay, but “tiny dancer” won out on that one.

The lyrics that forever remain a mystery to me are from Steve Miller’s The Joker, recorded in 1973. Clearly, I’m not alone, because there’s even a movie titled with the same lyric and it revolves around four guys trying to figure out what the hell Steve Miller was talking about. To refresh your memory, the song starts out with this four-line opening:

Some people call me the space cowboy yeah

Some call me the gangster of love

Some people call me Maurice

Cause' I speak of the pompatus of love

The sheet music declares that it’s “pompitous,” the liner notes indicate that it’s “pompatus,” and there’s a contingent that believes the word is “puppetudes.” The characters in the movie try out “prophetess, profitless, impotence, pompous ass,” among others, but give up trying to find the one true answer.

And that’s the right thing to do. When a song’s lyrics contain a neologism that confounds so many people, perhaps it has fulfilled its mission. We play it over and over, desperate to make sense of it all, but finally just give in to the pleasure of hearing the words. I’m no song writer (trust me on that one), but if I wrote a song that mystified everyone for decades, I would be a very happy camper.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Here’s Looking at You Kid

Someone called me a whiz kid the other day, because I knew how to record a voice memo on an iPhone. He’s a few years older than me, but it got me thinking that if I qualify as a kid, maybe it was time to start to giving the “Kid” moniker to anyone younger than me.

The server at the Indian restaurant will be Kid Curry, the UPS driver will be Kid Brown, which means the other delivery guy will be Kid Fed. My coffee will be expertly brewed by Kid Barista and I’ll purchase my jeans from Kid Levi. Movie tickets will be purchased from Kid Flic and burgers from Kid Mac. Kid Firestone will rotate my tires and Kid Kroger will bag my groceries. Kid Cable will keep my internets going and with any luck, I’ll never have to watch any of the shameless shenanigans of Kid Kardashian.

When you’re a kid, you don’t want be be called kid. As in, “Scram kid.” Or W. C. Field’s line, “Go away kid, ya bother me.” And being someone’s kid brother or kid sister isn’t exactly the description a young person wishes to be called.

But attitudes change and the years have mellowed my opinion about being “the kid.” Being the youngest carries no stigma anymore. On the contrary, when you put a bunch of boomers in a room, it’s quite the honor to be considered the kid.

It’s a storied tradition when you think about it. The Cisco Kid, Billy the Kid, Kid Shane, Karate Kid, Cudi the Kid, Kaitou Kid, Heartbreak Kid, Ringo Kid, Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, Kid Rock, Kid Kaplan, and who could forget the Sundance Kid. In the movie Casablanca, Rick toasts Ilsa with “Here’s looking at you kid.” That line is one of moviedom’s most famous.

A kid is young. A kid can get away with stuff. A kid has a certain joi de vivre, and who doesn’t want that? Yes, I like this “kid” thing. I like being called kid, and I think I’m really going to enjoy calling younger people “kid.”

It’s a lot better than whippersnapper.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

So Long Twinkie Defense

By now, it’s clear to everyone that Twinkies are not coming back. Not unless some Chinese entrepreneur takes up the cause, and that may not be as ridiculous as it sounds. You read that here first.

You can blame baby boomers for the popularity of Twinkies, Hostess Cupcakes, Snoballs, Devil Dogs, and Ring Dings, but remember that it was another generation baking up all these goodies and our parents who obliged us by buying them. They let us gorge ourselves on sweet treats that had absolutely no nutritional value and helped us on our way to becoming sugar junkies.

To be fair, they had about as much information about the dangers of so much sugar as they did about the danger of cigarette smoking. But let’s be reasonable – how could inhaling tar and nicotine be any good for you? Or consuming tons of sugar without a protein in sight?

We got smarter, and by we, I mean baby boomers. We demanded better foods and helped to advance the natural/organic food movement. Baby boomers helped to grow the exercise industry along with health clubs, work-outs, and the yoga and pilates movements. In short, we got off our asses (most of us anyway) and demanded a healthier diet that eliminated most of the sugar content that made up the diet of our early childhood.

Boomers started raising their own children and teaching them that “you are what you eat.” It was like Mother Earth redux. Much of the back to the farm movement is populated

by boomer offspring who were educated early in life about the value of knowing where your food comes from and who is growing it. The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is clearly a movement that can be traced back to baby boomer interest in eating healthier and smarter.

As a result, the children of Millennials are most likely going to be denied the chance to eat a Twinkie or some other sugar-loaded snack treat. These kids are going to grow up eating healthy food and maybe reversing the upward spiral of obesity that this nation has fostered.

So if you want to blame boomers for denying the next generations the guilty pleasures that we had, go ahead. We can accept the blame for that as long as you give us the credit for getting everyone to eat healthier.

And now some crazy person won’t murder someone and try to get off using the Twinkie defense, so there’s that!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Read the Code

QR-1435-7484-9917B could faintly remember a time when humans actually spoke to one another. It was a long time ago, but QR-1435-7484-9917B remembered when humans shared thoughts and emotions. Little things, such as the weather and if it looked like rain. QR-1435-7484-9917B would ask about someone’s family, how were they getting along. When QR-1435-7484-9917B was happy, the emotion was shared with others, and when QR-1435-7484-9917B was sad, that was shared as well.

This was a time well before the QR Code made life so much easier. Now, humans no longer had to struggle to find the words that would convey their emotions. The QR code embedded in their foreheads was designed to relieve us of this burden, and it did so with great efficiency. Now, when you passed another human on the street, you could instantly learn their entire life story, their hopes, their dreams, whether it was a good day or a bad day, everything that could possibly be important to knowing who they were. What a relief this was to a race that was so weary of human interaction. In the early days, we tried using 140 character capsulations, but that too was insufficient as a means of understanding and relating to our fellow beings. The fact that it was based on one-way interaction soon became obvious, and reinforced just what a revolutionary advance the QR Code was in the way humans communicate.

With boring pleasantries out of the way, humans could get to the nitty-gritty of what we wanted or needed. Let’s say you need constant validation. The QR Code insures that every human you meet will know this about you in nano-seconds. Or perhaps you have an inflated sense of self. This is immediately obvious to everyone you encounter, relieving them of the boredom of learning this about you over an extended period of time. Almost overnight, there was a quantum leap improvement in mutual understanding. Yes, there were still disagreements, sometimes even warlike behavior, but at least we all knew instantaneously where we stood.

So what explains this interest in the so called “good old days of human interaction?” Nostalgia, plain and simple. In every era of human progress, there is always a futile yearning for “the way things were,” a desire to get back to our human essence for wanting to know another human’s thoughts by talking directly to them. Everyone feels this way at one time or another.

For QR-1435-7484-9917B – not so much.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Show Me the Money

Why can’t baby boomers put away more money for their retirement? We know we’re going to need more than social security to live on, so what’s the problem? Besides losing a pantload of money when the market tanked, a slow recovery, and maybe losing your job, I mean what’s your excuse?

The conventional wisdom (sidebar: when did wisdom get conventional?) has it that boomers have selfishly squandered their money on or fancy cars, but that may be just one more myth among the many when it comes to baby boomers.

The National Center for Policy Analysis recently reported on how spending habits have changed over the decades. So guess in what areas boomers are spending more than prior generations. Let’s start with education: costs have increased 80% for 45 to 54 year-olds and 22% for 55 to 64 year-olds. Then there’s the continuing costs of supporting adult children. Remember when you got out of high school or college and then got a job? It has not worked out that way for a lot of the boomer offspring. About half of all boomers are still providing some financial support to their kids. Next up: housing costs have risen 25% from 20 years ago. And don’t forget healthcare costs: medical care and premiums have skyrocketed in 2 decades.

If all these factors are not enough to convince you that boomers have not been playing the profligates, consider how stagnant our earnings have been. Real median income in 1990 for 55 to 64 year-olds was $52,340. It peaked in 2007 at $60,345 and had fallen to $56,575 by 2010. I don’t want to know what it is in 2012, because it cannot have gotten any better.

So let’s review: everything is costing more but you’re making less. So how do we try to close that gap? We spend less on clothing, less on dining out, and less on transportation (there’s some very old cars out there). The experts advise us to focus on the spending categories that we can control but that seems difficult when it appears the cost of living is out of our control.

But let’s end on an upbeat note. Eventually your kids are going to have jobs and homes, and when they do, you can stake a claim on one of the bedrooms and live off their largesse for a while. No kids? It’s not too late to adopt.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Shacking Up?

When was the last time you heard that phrase? For me, hearing those words was like traveling back in a time machine, to circa 1970. That was when baby boomers began living in sin, or more popularly, shacking up.

Scandalous as it was at the time, it made perfect sense to us. You love someone, you’ve had sex at least once but more likely a few dozen times, well, dammit, you might as well move in together. It wasn’t about splitting the rent (for most of us….can’t speak for some cheapskates), it was about setting up house, being together all the time, enjoying each other’s company, living our lives together, etc. Holy smokes, were we surprised when the greatest generation looked down their noses at us and began whispering about how their kids were “shacking up.”

We thought it was more like taking a test drive. We were compatible in so many ways, but could we really live together? Was marriage in our future? One way to find out was to move in together, and we did learn a lot. It taught us about respect for one another’s space, shared decision making, and who was not so neat (i.e. which one was a total slob).

So it was with some surprise that I recently read that baby boomers are in the shacking up mode once again. Cohabitation, as the researchers like to call it, is on the rise, big time. The number of unmarried people over the age of 50 living together had doubled in the past 10 years. About one third of all baby boomers are unmarried today, and it looks like the prospects are slim for them getting hitched again at this point in their lives.

In 2012, living together as opposed to marrying may have a lot to do with finances. Widows and widowers don’t have to give up their spouses’ Social Security benefits or take on each other’s debts. You can have your own bank account and there’s no legal bond that forces you to stay together. If you’ve already experienced one divorce, shacking up is a great way to avoid another.

As for the stigma of “living in sin,” whom are boomers going to offend? Their parents are gone (literally or just mentally) and their children are just fine with the concept. That leaves friends and acquaintances and they aren’t going to throw stones at someone doing what they might be doing someday.

It could be worse – we could be forced to live in shacks.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Mo’ Boom

So the sluggish economy sent the birth rate in the U.S. into a tailspin. Besides not buying homes or cars, people decided to put off having babies. According to a Pew Research Center survey, about 22 per cent of 18 to 34 year-olds surveyed said they postponed starting a family because of economic considerations.

And now what can we expect as the economy improves? That’s right – a baby boom. The children of baby boomers are going to be starting families in a big way, and it’s already being referred to as the “Echo Boom.” Personally, I prefer my own name for it – the Boom Boom. Not only does it have more alliteration, it also sounds vaguely like the name of a strip club (the Boom Boom Room?) with even more alliteration.

The typical American woman plans to have an average of 2.3 children. Don’t get me started on the .3 part of the equation because I have never been able to understand the existence of fractional children, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to know the explanation. What I do know is that the number of women entering their childbearing years is on the rise. They are between the ages of 20 and 35 and they want to have sex. More specifically, they want to have sex that leads to the birth of a child (they’re not just sex-crazed for crying out loud). Oh, and one more thing. They are our daughters.

When I say “our” I really mean “your” daughters, since I don’t have one, but the point is that there are a lot of baby boomers out there (78 million by most counts) and they have a lot of daughters. If only a quarter of them have 2.3 babies…..well, you can see where this is going. It may be time to buy stock in disposable diaper companies.

Personally, I couldn’t be happier that there is a new baby boom coming along. For one thing, it will give everyone a new generation to blame for being selfish/spoiled/self-centered/demeaning-adjective-of-your-choice. Secondly, we need more worker bees paying into the system so that Social Security remains solvent. If we scale back the child labor laws, we could have these babies working at the age of 10!

So I say bring on the Boom Boom.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Social Media. Oxymoron?

If you’ve read some of the nasty tweets that people have put out there and then had to apologize for, it makes you wonder what is so social about social media? When you can insult an entire race, country or individual in less than 140 characters, maybe it’s just too easy.

Perhaps Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and the other social media tools have actually become antisocial media. Trump insults everyone. Louis C.K. insults his fans. Courtney Love…oh, forget it. Hundreds of corporate employees have put Tweets out in the internet-o-sphere and then had to walk them back with major mea culpas if they wanted to keep their jobs.

And celebrity apologies? Take your pick. Oprah has had to eat her words. So has Ashton Kutcher, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Weiner (oy vey, not just words but pictures too), Adam Carolla, Kristen Stewart (sorry I cheated), Hugh Jackman, Spike Lee, Justin Timberlake, Roseanne Barr, Daniel Tosh, Kanye West, and the list goes on and on. If you don’t know some of these names, just trust me. They overshared or said something totally insensitive and idiotic.

But are celebrities really that different from journalists,

politicians and just plain folks when it comes to self-censoring their social media output? Email and social media have just made it so darn convenient to put words, thoughts and pictures out there without a second thought. Could your words be hurtful? Of course. Would be helpful if you reread what you just wrote and thought about whether some people might misunderstand your meaning or find it offensive? You bet. Do the serial Tweeters ever think before they type something and hit the Tweet button? Apparently not, as there are news items each and every day that detail the latest social media train wreck.

One can only guess where the social media phenomenon is headed. I can envision the day when you no longer have to type your thoughts because your computer (or the Mind Reader that replaces it) will know exactly what you’re thinking and blab it out to the whole world. There will be no opportunity for reflection or self-editing. Imagine projectile vomiting of your innermost thoughts if that metaphor is not too gross. If you think that’s what we have now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

It’s off to work we go.

And the rest of the song lyrics?

We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig dig, dig, dig In our mine the whole day through To dig, dig, dig, dig, dig dig, dig, dig It’s what we like to do It ain’t no trick To get rich quick If you dig, dig, dig With a shovel or a stick dwarf miners

And boomers continue to dig – well past age 65. In fact, the percentage of baby boomers working past the traditional retirement age of 65 is now at a record high, and we all know why. They can’t afford to retire.

It’s not some dream retirement scheme that’s keeping them in the labor market. It’s way more complicated than that. Boomers are still working to compensate for the hit they took when the market tanked. They are still working because they are supporting offspring who have returned to the nest. They are still working because they realized they don’t have enough savings to cover life spans that are projected to last longer than ever. And many boomers are still working simply because the alternative lay-about lifestyle is an anathema to them.

If you thought you were going to die in your eighties, you might as well pack it in at age 65 and have Grumpy15 years to travel/golf/fish/knit/whatever. But if most of us are going to live well into our nineties, that’s 25 years to fill, or a hell of a lot of bogeys/fish/scarves. And even that assumes we will have the mobility for any of these activities when we’re in our nineties.

For many boomers, working is a habit that’s hard to break. Unlike our parents, perhaps, boomers are often defined by their careers. It can be a comfort to say “I AM a lawyer/doctor/designer/ manager/teacher/musician, than to say I WAS any of those things. Even if retirement brings new challenges and joys, the career that was your life’s work is completely in the rear view mirror, and that can be an unsettling sensation.

Speaking of unsettling, the statistic in the latest Labor Department stats that gave me pause was that for the first time ever, one in nine men over the age of 75 were still working, along with one in 20 women.

And here I was thinking that 70 might be the next high water mark for retirement.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Who Says Boomers Are Selfish?

Sometimes it’s hard to refute the myth that baby boomers are self-centered. It’s not our fault that are parents led us to believe we were the center of the universe. Yes, we spent a good portion of our years on the planet taking care of business that would benefit ourselves, but the true measure of a generation is what we’ve been doing for everyone lately.

So what are boomers up to? How about their eyeballs when it comes to putting their parents and children ahead of their own interests? An Ameriprise Financial 2007 survey of three generations (boomers, their children and their parents) revealed that boomers were putting their children and parents in front of their own self-interest. Only 44% were saving for their retirement.

When the survey was updated in 2011, the number had sunk to 24%. That’s right – only one in four boomers were saving for retirement. Where was the money going? More than half of the surveyed boomers were supporting aging parents, paying for groceries, medical expenses and utility bills. That’s on top of paying tuition, insurance and car payments for their kids.

The big irony underlying the survey is that the boomers thought their children were deficient in their knowledge of how to handle money and their children thought that their boomer parents were not going to have enough savings on which to retire. Now there’s a perfect illustration of how difficult it is to be part of the sandwich generation. Pulled in two directions financially, boomers are going to have to figure out what’s got to give.

Financial planners are telling boomers that they have to cut the cord and start saving again for their retirement, because there’s a good chance their offspring will not be able to support them to the same extent that boomers have supported their own parents.

The other irony to the survey is that when asked what choice they would make between retirement savings and supporting their children, most boomers claim that they are choosing retirement savings. But the claim is not backed up by the reality. Boomers are still giving preferential treatment to their kids and their parents, and shortchanging themselves when it comes to retirement.

Bottom line, boomers may end up destitute, but don’t forget, they were looking out their parents and their kids, and that’s not selfish, that’s selfless.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

CAR-BOOM!!

Forget new car ads aimed at twenty-somethings – that’s not who’s buying cars. Insert sound of CAR-BOOM!! here.

A new study by J.D. Power (who is that guy, anyway...and who are the associates?) and AARP showed that people over 50 are now buying 6 out every 10 new vehicles sold in the U.S. And if you look only at the big three carmakers in the U.S., 67% of new models are bought by boomers.

So what’s the deal? Retirees who want some new rides is one big factor. Maybe they have been scrimping for a bunch of years driving ten year-old used cars, but they want that new car smell again.

It could also be that boomers are the only people who can afford new cars. Have you looked at the prices lately? It sounds awfully cliché, but who doesn’t remember (circa 1969) when you could buy a brand new car with all the options for around $3,200? Try multiplying that figure by a factor of 10 to arrive at the average cost in 2012. Another factor is that younger workers have been harder hit by the recession than boomers, so they are the ones foregoing new cars and hanging on to their used vehicles for longer periods.

And maybe, just maybe, boomers are acting out what that tiresome bumper sticker says – “We’re Spending Our Children’s Inheritance.” Maybe some boomers are tired of paying for elder care, tired of subsidizing unemployed/underemployed offspring, and just plain tired. And as everyone knows, the cure for this particular malaise is to go shopping. For a new $30,000 car. It may also explain the increasing popularity of leasing. That way you can get a new car every two or three years by making exorbitant monthly payments. Is it really cost-effective? No, but who cares. Life is short and the least you can do for yourself is have a nice ride – or two. Don’t forget all those retirees that have also bought old trucks and muscle cars to play with on the weekend.

If you’ve been on the fence about buying a new car, this should give you the confidence to just do it. You’ll be helping the economy. Your kids really don’t want that big inheritance anyway. They know it will just spoil them for the way the world really works.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.