Retirement is a chance to redesign your life

The "Silver Tsunami" of aging boomers is a large, diverse market that companies shouldn't overlook, one author says.

By Robert N. Jenkins, LifeTimes Editor
Published November 27, 2007

SARASOTA - If time gets tight when she's delivering a speech, Dr. Mary S. Furlong can hurry through the PowerPoint and speak over the chuckles after her one-liners. Speeding up is easy, because she has studied her topic for 23 years.

But when she answers questions from her audience or from a reporter, she often pauses as she carefully frames her reply.

This taking time to contemplate, she often says, is a part of the personality of her subjects: the 78-million boomers.

"Arriving at 60 is a life-changing event that rattles your comfort zone," Furlong says. "But at midlife, you don't get a guidance counselor, like you did in high school."

Consequently, she told me after speaking at a conference here this month, "We want to set a very creative tone to the rest of our lives, putting a lot of energy into crafting an alternative to what our parents are coping with."

The speech and her recent book, Turning Silver Into Gold: How to Profit in the New Boomer Marketplaces, focus on selling to boomers. Every 7.5 seconds another American turns 50, demographers estimate. Furlong terms this phenomenon "the Silver Tsunami."

"Boomers will go through more transitions in their 50s and 60s than during any other phase of life," she says in her book. The transitions revolve around one or more of these concerns:

- Family - empty nests, loss of parents, arrival of grandchildren.

- Health issues - menopause, heart disease, vision and hearing loss, arthritis.

- Housing - downsizing, rightsizing, remodeling, second homes.

- Finances - work and retirement.

- Daily activities - time for passion and play.

- Perspective - the search for meaning.

Furlong, a professor at Santa Clara University in California, founded SeniorNet.org in 1986, "to connect seniors and thus mitigate the loneliness," she said.

In 1996 she founded ThirdAge Media, which advised on marketing to boomers. Now head of Mary Furlong & Associates, she seeks to get "socially responsible, consumer-conscious" firms aware of those life-stages and needs.

Not that companies have to sacrifice profits for altruism. Furlong told her Sarasota audience, "Ninety-one percent of America's net assets are in the hands of those 40 and older."

Their money is being spent every which way, Furlong said:

- Women 40 and older spend nearly 50 percent more time each week playing online games than do men or teenagers. An estimated 19 percent of all gamers are at least 50 years old.

- Gardening is already a $36.8-billion industry, and homeowners ages 55 to 64 spend more on horticulture than does any other age group. The Census Bureau estimates a 48 percent increase in people in this age group in the next decade.

- Americans 35 and older bought 44 percent of all music sold in 2004 - up from 28 percent of sales in 1991.

- Americans spend more on their pets, $41-billion a year, than they do on toys or candy.

As boomers become empty nesters or lose a spouse, they often get a pet for companionship: 39 percent of those 55 to 64 years old, and 25 percent of those 65 and older, own a pet.

- "When the youngest kid finishes college," Furlong said, "that's the time for the new kitchen. The cost to remodel is about the same as a year of college tuition."

But there are other pulls and pushes on older adults, whom she said "had forgotten to work out for 30 years, we were too busy raising our kids."

Health issues threaten to overwhelm boomers, the oldest of whom turned 61 this year:

"Dustin Hoffman, in The Graduate, got one word of advice: Plastics," the professor said. "Now, the words would be diabetes and reverse mortgage."

She continued: "You will wind up taking care of your parents longer than you took care of your children.

"The new midlife crisis is taking on eldercare . . . It is one of the fastest-growing areas for employers' HR departments . . .

"Healthy living and aging matters (including vitamins, pharmaceuticals, home health care and eldercare) are already a $480-billion industry . . .

"Because 83 percent of older adults would prefer to 'age in place' in their own homes, we need to start retrofitting those homes with better lighting, better ergonomics of chairs . . ."

She joked that the new travel scheme is a combination reunion-spa treatment-plastic surgery. Boomers know that although they cannot remain young, they can stay fit and look better.

This generation, more than previous ones, also says it is concerned with giving something back, in the form of volunteerism.

With so many competing claims for the mind and soul, what is it that people over 50 should be thinking, I asked Furlong.

First came her pause, then:

"They need to think about their 'mosaic,' all the pieces of themselves.

"They need to plan to carve out this much time for play, this much time caring for others, the creative time.

"They need to think, 'Who is on my dance card? I need to be an insightful colleague, a patient listener, a parent who's tuned in.'

"They need to think, 'I need to turn the page on my own life . . .'

"Grace, caring, nourishing - we need to design our lives for those things."

Robert N. Jenkins can be reached at (727) 893-8496 or jenkins@sptimes.com.

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Turning Silver Into Gold: How to Profit in the New Boomer Marketplaces, by Dr. Mary S. Furlong; Financial Times Press, $24.99

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A reminder: Life Times wants to hear from retirees about whether that change has been what they expected - or has it been more, or less?

Send your thoughts to bjenkins@sptimes.com (in the subject line write "Coping with Retirement"). Or mail your comments to Robert N. Jenkins, LifeTimes, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731.

Either way, include your name, city and a phone number so we can get in touch with you for a later article.

[Last modified November 26, 2007, 15:14:46]