Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "Boomers" have dismal retirement investments.

The premise is complete BS, I could retire today if I wanted to.







But, I'd hafta die next Friday.

Who would have thunk.

That's funny!
I hear ya,
We certainly cant dismiss the fact that a lot of luck is also involved in being financially successful.

People who tell you different are full of themselves, and are letting their ego get away from them.

People make their own luck.

Lol. Remember that.

Ego, meet arrogance!!
You are a long ways from the end of the game.
My hunch tell's me you will fail in spectacular fashion.

I'm not sure that article really has anything to say. How about a complete picture. How many boomers have jobs with pensions? Paid for homes? Savings? My 401K would leave a pretty poor picture of my retirement and I will be set very well.

Op Ed
As the boomers turn
Since the '80s, polls have found those who came of age in the '60s and '70s becoming more family oriented and conservative. If more boomers are led to embrace the GOP, it could affect the 2012 vote.
September 12, 2011|By Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg
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Baby boomers who came of age during the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s tended to call themselves Democrats, and as time passed, that identification strengthened. In 1969, far more in the 18- to 29-year-old age cohort � the front end of the baby boom � called themselves Democrats (35%) than Republicans (21%). A decade later, when they were 28 to 39 years old, their identification with the Democratic Party over the GOP was even stronger (45% to 19% in Gallup's surveys).

But starting in the 1980s, attitudes of the baby boomers began changing. Polls found them becoming more family oriented and, over time, more conservative. If this transformation continues, leading more of them to embrace the GOP, it could affect the 2012 election.

Although characterized as rebellious, the vast majority of boomers were not actually radical during the 1960s and '70s. In fact, it was older, less-educated Americans who first called our involvement in Vietnam a mistake, not the younger, college-educated "antiwar generation." Young people were, initially at least, more supportive of going to war in Vietnam than their elders.

When the '60s generation was asked in the 1980s to look back to its supposedly tumultuous youth, the recollections were more tame than many had expected. In a 1986 poll for Time magazine, only a third of the generation said they had favored the social protests and demonstrations of the 1960s and '70s, and only a quarter said they took part in them. A mere 8% of respondents said they used marijuana regularly during the 1960s and '70s, although 26% acknowledged occasional use. And just 18% of those surveyed in a poll done for Rolling Stone magazine in 1987 said they had pursued a countercultural lifestyle in the late '60s.



Baby boomers were, however, less conventionally religious than their parents, and more liberal on racial issues, homosexuality and women's roles. Some three-quarters of those polled by Rolling Stone said their parents' generation put more emphasis on organized religion than they did, had more respect for authority and believed more in tried-and-true methods. The spirit of openness of the counterculture left a deep impression on them. In the Rolling Stone poll, 83% stated that their generation's willingness to be more open and share personal feelings was a change for the better from their parents' generation.

But the natural conservatizing effects of aging were also becoming evident in these 1980s polls. The passions of youth had been tempered by the practical reality of marriages, children and mortgages. Nearly 7 in 10 in the Rolling Stone poll said they were more family oriented than they thought they would be. When asked about changes from their parents' generation, 59% said more-permissive attitudes about sex were a change for the worse (31% thought it was for the better), 67% said more single parenthood was a change for the worse, and 72% said they thought less religious training for children was a change for the worse.

Ideological beliefs moved too. In the 1986 Time poll, 64% of the baby boomers polled said they had become more conservative since the 1960s. When asked about their ideological identification, 31% said they had been liberal in the 1960s and '70s, but only 21% described themselves that way in 1986. The number identifying as conservative rose from 28% to 41%.

The ideological reorientation of early boomers that began in the 1980s has continued. Two of the country's best long-running surveys show how those born between 1943 and 1958, the so-called near-olds at the front of the baby boom, have changed. In the 1972 American National Election Study survey, 30% of today's near-olds called themselves liberals. In 2008, 12% did. The proportion calling themselves conservative rose from 21% to 46%. In 1972, 51% of eligible voters in the early baby boom cohort called themselves Democrats and 29% Republicans. In 2008, 45% said they were Democrats and 48% said they were Republicans. The National Opinion Research Center's data also show a substantial increase (18 points) between 1974 and 2010 in conservative identification for the near-old cohort and a smaller movement in the GOP's direction. Those born between 1927 and 1942 changed far less in both surveys.

The importance of the '60s generation is magnified by its demographic weight. The near-olds vote in much higher numbers than some other groups. Census data from 2008 showed that 49% of the eligible voting-age population between the ages 18 and 24 turned out to vote, while 72% of the larger 55-to-63 group said they voted. The combined electoral heft of the near- and new-olds could dramatically alter the political landscape.

Don't you have some barns to go tear down so you can build bigger barns?

In the story of Job everyone realizes that the devil took away what Job had and that later God gave it all back.

But the story is also pretty plain that everything Job had to begin with......he had because God was protecting and blessing him.

I disagree with your Encore story. I am a boomer and my wife and I have saved a lot more than that along with some investment properties. I know a number of people in my age bracket who also have done the same. Maybe my experience is not a reflection of the rest of the country but from my little corner or the country I say no true!

401k $ goes up and down but if you are actively managing your funds you are way ahead. I have 6 different funds that cross the board and none are returning less than 18% YTD and most are 12-14% over the past 5 years even after GWB's crash.

It should have been a requirement in the beginning of this discussion to post one's age.....just to reflect one's experience and POV.
It wasn't my generation who elected FDR,Truman,LBJ.
I was a no-nothing kid who believed in the broadcasts of Walter Cronkite until i went to VN in 1969. It took only a month or so to see that Cronkite was deceiving the American public. I spent 719 days of a four yr enlistment in VN.
I was discharged in '72-honorably.
I'm 65 and have been retired for a few years now....not lavishly but comfortably.
Your blanket statement about my generation being socialists and electing socialists shows what a mean-spirited little bitch you are
And before i forget......GFY.

neither are dumb twits like you dude.......

my savings and retirement is fine,

I think your a nice enough guy. But things can change very fast that you have no control over. Sounds like you have been very LUCKY and hope that doesn't change.

Just like too much Nitrogen in the lake is pollution.
Too much money in the system is pollution.
If people were poorer, they would have to rely on family.
Family can give the most negative feedback on bad behavior without you killing them.

When I was a kid in the 50's, no one had anything. But the hunting and fishing were great. I would trade it all.

Yep, for most folks in the old days, retirement meant you went to live with the family of one of your kids.

I am certainly glad that I wasn't doing what I watched some people doing when I was in my 20s. Were they saving more than me? Undoubtedly considering the time they spent talking about money and the literature they read. Perhaps that provided some satisfaction for them. But I've always thought life was worth living from one end to the other and not that retirement was life's goal - to be set for comfort when (if) you arrive. At this point I have a lot of great memories and a set of really bad knees which would seriously crimp a lot of things I once hoped I'd be able to continue to do later in life - when I had more time. And I've helped raise three kids who my wife already had when we married as well as two more of my own making and still another that one of the older kids somehow ( ) produced too early in life. A safe life might be comfortable but I have no regrets about running some risks. And the pension I gave little thought to when I was in my 20s is quite livable - have no idea what the savings stuff will be good for or how; don't know if it's too little or not. Certainly don't plan to jet around the world as some might.

As much as I've tried to encourage young co-workers to start putting a few dollars away each month I haven't found the current crop of young people to be readily inclined. Many of them are too concerned about paying down their $20-40000 school loans.

And if that were the case today, more folks would do a better job of raising their kids.

Then consider keeping better company.

After ~30 years of ups & downs working I'm somewhat ahead of the curve. Not a lot, but somewhat. I have a good job now, and I'm putting away a lot of it.

Right now anything Oil & Gas related is up, and so is the economy around here. I bought a decent house 2 years ago, and it's appreciated roughly 20% in 2 years. I could sell it and re-invest in something closer to work, but it would cost me $100-200k more. I'm still debating if saving an hour a day commuting is worth the money. Or I just tough it out and look for some land in the country, or in a small city, mindful of retirement.

I'm also mindful that oil & gas has been a boom & bust industry as long as I've known about it, and I'm not planning to be deep in debt when the next bust hits.

Trying to encourage employees to save is a tough sell. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 of our guys put money into a 401k program, and most are way below the max contribution. $7k per year when you are in your 20's is probably unrealistic, IMO, but even $2k is better than nothing. Compound interest truly is a great thing to use.

�...But it is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working class�especially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions. I lived on a ranch in California, and I was hard put to find the ladder whereby to climb. I early inquired the rate of interest on invested money, and worried my child�s brain into an understanding of the virtues and excellencies of that remarkable invention of man, compound interest��

Jack London, author, 1906

If you save only $200 per month, and make only 5% compound interest, you wind up with $159k total, versus $72k if you put it in a mattress.