Is the bill coming due now?

A large chunk of the baby boomers came of age during the greatest bull market in U.S. history. This led to unprecedented wealth creation, good jobs and the ability to live, "the good life".

When times are good you should, "save for a rainy day". I'm sure we have all heard this. Put money aside for when times are bad. Things cannot always be good. That's life. That's the way the ball bounces; the cookie crumbles; oh, you know.

The economic woes that are forcing homeowners into foreclosure, choking spending on nondiscretionary goods and driving up credit card bills may claim another group of victims in the coming years: broke baby boomers.

Consumers 45 years and older are raiding or compromising their 401(k) accounts, shirking monthly payments and skipping regular medications and doctor visits at an alarming rate, according to senior advocacy group AARP.

As many as 25% of Americans 45 to 64 said they are taking these steps to stay financially afloat, the AARP found in a recent study. That puts them at a decided disadvantage when retirement rolls around, particularly if they have subverted their health, and may lead to putting that retirement on hold.

Gen-x'ers, you should have two types of savings. The first is your retirement savings. You never, ever, ever, never touch this. Not until you retire. That's why it is called retirement savings.

The second type of savings you should have is savings. Just plain old savings. This is money that is very liquid and earns almost nothing in the way of interest. Savings accounts, short term certificates of deposit and government savings bonds. Things that can quickly be converted into cash. This money may loose value to inflation but it will not loose value due to fluctuations in the stock market.

At the same time, Standard & Poor's reports that the average American household savings rate remains at 0%, making it "more difficult for older Americans to finance their retirement."

"This is a horrific scenario," said Tom Nelson, AARP's chief operating officer. "People are feeling this pinch in the short term . . . but the long-term consequences that are facing these individuals and our economy for years, if not decades, are frightening."

Just plain old savings will save your ass one day. If the company you work for shuts its doors you can pay your bills and eat while you look for another job.

If you are going out to dinner and you do not have money in savings then you are stupid. That is all there is too it. You should have at least three months of cash on hand and to be really safe six months is even better.

Now, I'm sure I'm not telling you something that you've never heard before.

Why would you not be doing it?

The youngest boomers were having the most problems paying their mortgages or rents. They were also more apt to pull money out of their 401(k) accounts and other investments and change their lifestyles. About 76%, for example, said they are eating out less, and 71% said they are spending less on entertainment.

Eating out is a LUXURY.

In this nation we have confused our wants and needs for a very long time. We have confused them for so long now that we treat luxuries as entitlements and justify why we deserve them.

Just because you work hard does not mean that you deserve a luxury. You never deserve it. You indulge in it at the cost of some other opportunity.

Remember that.

I'm not saying never eat out. Just be aware that if you don't have enough money saved up and you choose to eat out you are making a conscious decision to take pleasure at the risk of something bad not happening later.

Now the boomers that can't afford their mortgages: Just because the mortgage broker or loan officer tell you that you can afford a payment of X does not mean that you have to take out that big of a loan.

When you buy a house buy the smallest house that you can live in. Take a fifteen year mortgage and then pay extra on it. Buying a smaller house will give you lower property taxes, low utility costs and smaller maintenance expenses. In short, you will have more money to save and invest which means that you will be able to retire.

Mark Iwry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said it's hard to catch up on missed 401(k) payments. Not only is the actual payment gone, so, too, is the match by an employer, as well as the growth of the tax-free money. "You've got to put in a larger amount just to replace what you took out earlier," Iwry said.

Making matters worse, he said, is that people tend to assume they're going to die earlier than they actually do. Many don't plan financially to live until they're 90 because they don't think they'll ever get to be 90.

Take that to heart x-er's. You can have a good retirement as long as you take responsibility for it now. But, we are gen-x and we tend to do be more responsible anyway.

At the same time, the prospects of retiring early, or even on time, are dimming. The AARP study found that one-fifth of those who said their stock portfolio is lighter are postponing plans to retire. About 32% of those people are at traditional retirement ages, 55 to 64.

All I can say about that is; fuck.

Well, like I frequently say. Learn from the baby boomers. An example of what not to do can be as good as an example of what to do.

Who is going to take care of you?

In the 1970's a high school graduate could earn a decent living, buy a house and raise a family.

Then the boomers started selling off everything. They urge everyone to go to college. Everyone. Even if it was to get a history degree. This diluted the value of a college education to the point that now you need a college degree just to stuff files into a cabinet.

At least a current graduate has a mountain of debt to climb as well.

One of the other offshoots of this was the idea that you could, "Do what you love and the money will follow". No longer were you to choose a career based on earning a living you were now meant to, "follow your bliss".

This created a nation of people with marine biology or women studies degrees. Degrees that definitely won't help you to, 'put food on your family'.

One of the things that was lost was nursing degrees. Given the choice of following their bliss or going into nursing folks (both women and men) choose their bliss. (Cool, with my art history degree I can make lattes at Starbucks!)

This has set the stage for another crisis. There are not enough people in the field of nursing or related caregiver jobs.

From the News-Press comes this article:

There's one certified geriatrician for every 2,500 older adults; as many as 90 percent of home health aides leave their jobs within two years; primary care physicians - the gatekeepers for seniors' medical needs - are a shrinking part of the medical work force; and Medicare and insurance plans focus on short-term treatment rather than wellness and preventive care.

Those numbers are according to a new Institute of Medicine report that aims to rattle the nation before the first of its 78 million boomers hits 65 in 2011.

...

As the sheer number of seniors outmatches the health care work force, experts say a few shifts must happen: The focus of care needs to move from treating disease to preventing it, the delivery of care needs to move from institutions like nursing homes and into neighborhoods and seniors need to play a more active role in maintaining their health.

"The boomers have already reached age 60," said Sue Maxwell, the director of Lee Memorial's Older Adult Services. "We are really running out of time."

Actually, time already ran out. We already need health workers trained and into the workforce. If there was a giant shift in thinking about a career choice it would be the Millennials that are just starting college that would be training for these jobs. That would take 4 - 6 years. Then they would need experience too. I think the boomers would want someone with a few years of practice under their belt to be working with them.

It is not the kind of work that draws bright and budding practitioners into its ranks.

"I remember a friend saying to me, 'Peg, you are too good a nurse to go into gerontology,' " said Peg Gray-Vickrey, a registered nurse who is the associate vice president for curriculum and instruction at Florida Gulf Coast University. "But it's the most rewarding area; I'm so happy with this profession."

In a Me generation world the focus is solely on what is best for oneself you would expect people to be discouraged from going into career that would benefit many people.

Maybe the boomer generation will take health care into its own hands.

"The body does respond to small amounts of attention to diet, exercise, smoking, coffee and liquor," said Clarke Dahlgren, 77, of Fort Myers, who is active in senior issues as a regional AARP advocacy volunteer.

He asks not how prepared communities are for seniors, but for how prepared seniors are for the reality of their retirements - from their financial stability to their oversight of their own health issues.

Well, we all know the answer to that one.

Remember Gen-X. Live a good life now. Don't wait another 15 years to start exercising and saving for retirement. Yes, you may not live to be 80, but odd are you will.

Be prepared. Don't be a boomer.

Building like a Volcano - Look out boomers This thing is gonna blow

More and more you can see the writing on the wall.

When I started this blog it was hard to find anti-boomer news stories. There might be one or two news stories a week. Now they come fast and furious. There are more of them then I have time to comment on. (And for some strange reason you folks keep coming back to listen to me comment on them.)

It seems to me that Gen-x is getting it's collective slacker act together and slowly starting to roast the boomers.

Even the main stream media is getting in on the act. Here's some for you from the LA Times:

Anyone who believes that the cultural imperialism of baby boomers is limited to the generations that came after them need only see a recent documentary called "Young at Heart." Almost unanimously loved by critics (most of them baby boomers), the film depicts a Massachusetts senior citizens chorus (median year of birth 1929) that became an international touring act when its director (year of birth 1953) switched its repertoire from flapper-era ditties like "Yes, We Have No Bananas" to golden not-as-oldies by such artists as the Rolling Stones, James Brown and the Clash.

Let's start of with a chorus singing The Clash. I don't care what age you are that is just wrong. How would that even work? (It is probably on YouTube but I am not going to go look. You, however, are free to do what you wish.) Here's London Calling in three part harmony and sung as a fugue. Just the idea of it gives one the hebbies.

James Brown doesn't seem like it would lend itself to choral music either.

Many of the choristers seem to neither understand nor particularly like the material; their own preferences run toward opera or Rodgers and Hammerstein. But conditioned by cheering audiences of mostly younger people, these oldsters have been convinced that they are healthier, happier and sharper -- not to mention better traveled -- because of Mick Jagger and Mick Jones. Boomer-era classic rock is not just music but a life force.

Maybe they could do Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra. I would prefer Dean though. He always seemed cooler than Frank. At least to me.

Oh well... Next.

As a member of Generation X, I should know -- I've been strong-armed into an appreciation of '60s and '70s pop culture my whole life. There are an estimated 76 million boomers (10,000 babies a day on average, born between 1946 and 1964), while we Xers (born between 1965 and 1982) number a paltry 48 million. So boomers set the tone for everyone. Their tastes, needs and values are considered America's default setting. They turn 60, and it warrants magazine covers. They get a cold, and the world sneezes with them.

So privileged is this group, they've been allowed to change generational labels the way they changed their (always "groundbreaking") clothing styles. They've been known, in whole or in part, as the Dr. Spock Generation, the Free Love Generation, the Generation That Changed America, the Me Generation, Hippies, Yuppies, Bobos and, to certain members of Gen X, "moronic aging hippie posers." Despite having grown out of the category years ago, they remain, thanks to a certain iconic TV show, etched in the popular imagination as forever "thirtysomething."

Don't forget there is a new group of them now. They call themselves Generation Jones. They call themselves this because they are always Jonesin' for the good life. I'm not making this up. Do a Google search if you don't believe me.

So why does this stroll down memory lane feel more like a carjacking? Maybe because for every truly significant event of 1968, there are half a dozen not-necessarily-newsworthy happenings that we're goaded into remembering with just as much gusto. Amid the nods to King and Kennedy, we can expect this year to be replete with art house revivals of the films "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Yellow Submarine," innocuous if tiresome public radio features about Valerie Solanas' shooting of Andy Warhol, and, if there's a slow week in entertainment news, maybe even an E! special commemorating the marriage of Jackie Kennedy to Aristotle Onassis.

Even though I wasn't alive when any of this stuff happened, I sure feel like I was. Maybe that's because my generational cohorts and I have already endured five anniversaries of 1968 (one for each decade, plus the 25th thrown in for good measure) as well as four Woodstock revivals and countless Summer-of-Love-themed concerts. As though trapped at a reunion for a school we didn't attend, pre- and post-boomers can only nod in bored bewilderment while the no-longer-hippies get their retroactive groove on.

What is sad is that anyone in in America under the age of 40 has a better knowledge of 60's pop culture B.S. than they do of either the first two world wars. We've been inundated with more info about Woodstock (not the bird) than we have been about the Constitution of the United States. Believe me, we think that is just groovy.

It is, by now, a cliche for members of Generation X to complain about the excesses and hypocrisies of the hippie generation. (Gen Y has its grievances toward that generation too, but unlike Xers, nearly all of their parents are bona fide boomers, so their gripes may have their roots in bedtime or borrowing the car.) In the 1990s, when Gen Xers weren't busy thinking up synonyms for "alienated," we were carving out a collective identity largely concerned with our role as the victims of any number of boomer-imposed crimes (dwindling Social Security, fearsome divorce statistics, AIDS as the death rattle of the free-love party).

It may be unoriginal to point out that the sanctimony of "getting back to the garden" in the late 1960s and early 1970s begat the equal and opposite sanctimony of the "greed is good" mantra of the 1980s. But one need only rent "The Big Chill" to be reminded that if there's anything boomers enjoy more than the music of Procol Harum and Three Dog Night, it's remembering the earnest piety of their college days. This reminiscing is even better if it can be done within the confines of an expensively furnished house.

That would be a heavily mortgage home filled with furniture that requires no payment until 2011. Even better, that home would have been purchased twenty years ago and now is mortgage for three or for times its original purchase price. Live for today. Right boomers?

Even a lot of boomers hate boomers, and not just the right-wing kind, who love to blame the half-life of hippie-era hedonism for everything from teen sex to homelessness. The Democratic political consultant Paul Begala (year of birth 1961) published a screed in Esquire in 2000 denouncing boomers as "the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history." Pointing out that key objects of boomer worship like the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin were all born before World War II ended, he suggests that (Bruce Springsteen excepted) "the truest [musical] expression of their generation" was actually disco.

When the boomers had the chance to make music first they gave us Disco. Then they went on to give us Hair Metal and New Wave. Both had the artistic depth of a wading pool. But, at least you could party to it.

In 2011, get ready to honor the death of Jim Morrison, the Concert for Bangladesh and Evel Knievel's record-setting motorcycle leap over 19 cars.

And on and on it will go until, say, 2050, when, if they're lucky, the last of the boomers will be living out their days in the Young at Heart Chorus. Something tells me they'll bring a little something extra to "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"

Well, that was most of it. I don't usually take that much of the story. But you can go read the rest of it yourself.

Until next time. Just for the chorus, here's Dean Martin.