Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with 10 million dollars are not happier than people with nine million dollars.
— Hobart Brown
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
— Abraham Lincoln
Psychologist and author Gail Sheehy tells us that life is a series of passages, points in time in which our lives, or at least our perceptions of who we are, take a wrenching turn.
I had one of these personal epiphanies a few years ago at a booth in a Cedar City restaurant where a waitress informed me that I would be charged a dollar less for my lunch than my three golfing buddies.
Foolishly, I asked her why I was getting special treatment. "Because you're a senior citizen!" she replied, cheerfully.
"I am not a senior citizen"" I shot back indignantly, looking at my (younger) pals for support, but seeing only smirks. "I'm only 55!" (And a young-looking 55 at that, or so I had thought before the cherubic waitress trashed that conceit.)
"Which makes you eligible for our senior citizen discount," she rejoined, her smile never wavering.
"Since when," I started to sputter, "does 55 make you a senior . . . " but then I remembered. I had been a member of the American Association of Retired Persons for five years, the official organization for people like me; people of a certain age, as my grandmother used to say.
I had joined AARP on impulse, mainly because it was really cheap and they said their lobbyists in Congress would look out for my "interests." Moreover, I'd get their magazine, "Modern Maturity," and it had all kinds of interesting articles for those of us age 50 and up. As for the "R" in AARP, no problem. Most of its members aren't retired anyway.
I suppose I should thank that waitress. She made me face the fact that I was a lot closer to the end of the marathon than the beginning. Today, when someone offers me a geezer discount, I grab the money and run.
But now there's a whole new generation of Americans eligible for AARP membership. They were born in the years following World War II when millions of GIs returned home, got married and started their families. They are called "baby boomers" and they are legion — 78 million legion, according to American Demographics. They've pretty much had their way all of their lives, and they don't see any reason for that to change now.
It's going to take more than a waitress knocking a buck off their lunch tabs for boomers to take to their rocking chairs and begin reminiscing about Beaver Cleaver, James Dean and the fact that they paid less than $20,000 for their first house.
Well, OK, they already do that, but as for automatically joining AARP, not a chance, which is why the organization is currently launching a five-year, $100 million ad campaign to convince the new 50-somethings that AARP is not their father's old-folks club but another way to leverage their already considerable clout.
Sure, all the TV commercials seem aimed at Generation Xers and Yers, but don't be fooled. The boomers outnumber the 20-some-things, they've got more money, and their inheritances, now beginning to roll in, are bulging their portfolios and spending power.
The marketing gurus know all this and are beginning to test the waters. Last month, Bank of Utah began offering a "Top Fifty" checking account designed "especially for people over 50." The program offers more than 50 benefits, including unlimited checking, travel and hotel savings, estate and investment services, preferred pricing on prescription medications and eyeglasses. . . . This bank clearly wants to lure boomer business.
We're going to be seeing a lot more promotions like that, but no one should expect boomers to be grateful. Our parents (I think of myself as an older-brother boomer) lived through the Great Depression and have spent their lives waiting for the next one, almost wistfully, it seems. Many of our folks consider investing in the stock market as "speculating" and don't really trust any investment not guaranteed by Uncle Sam.
Not boomers. We've lived our lives scoffing at our parents' horror stories of Depression-era bread lines and Dad or Grandpa riding the rails looking for work.
Life has not been one long yellow brick road for boomers — Vietnam comes to mind — but from an economic standpoint we've had it better than any previous American generation and expect more of the same. Dow 30,000 in a few years? No problem. Social Security? We'll collect or know the reason why. Do we love our 401(k) plans? Like our mothers.
Regis Philbin asks, "Who wants to be a millionaire?" but many of us already are. Lincoln Financial Group recently completed a study that found the number of households with incomes of $1 million or more has soared over the past two decades to 10 million and climbing. (J. Todd Anderson, regional CEO of the Salt Lake office of Lincoln Financial, invites you to log onto their Web site ( www.lfg.com) and go to the planner icon to check out their financial adviser page.)
Nor did they get rich quick by starting up "dot-com" Internet businesses or "day-trading" stocks. Most of the nouveau riche got that way via traditional industries, such as construction, wholesaling, distribution, medicine and law. And let's not forget the white-collar folks. Most corporate CEOs today are millionaires.
Moreover, a recent study by the VIP Forum found that most millionaires have reached that status in rather mundane ways. Instead of building a better mousetrap or recording a hit record, they just plodded along putting money into their personal pension plans — IRAs, 401(k)s — corporate stock options, and their own small businesses.
Well, good for them, but millionaires are still the exception rather than the rule. Despite the longest-running economic boom in history, a study this year by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) found that 56 percent of American households are woefully unprepared for retirement, so much so that their "golden years" will mean a lower standard of living than they have now.
It's clear that while many boomers will be set up nicely for retirement — an event which many have targeted up to 10 years earlier than the traditional age 65 — the majority has been putting off serious saving and investing, assuming that "something will turn up" as it always has for our generation — a group for whom the word "entitlement" has become a credo.
And, sure enough, most investment gurus insist it's not too late for procrastinating boomers to save themselves if they'll just stop waiting for a rich uncle to die or a winning lottery ticket to make up for all those years of spending instead of saving.
If you're young, and have time on your side, the "magic" of compounding interest can make even modest savings morph into a formidable nest egg by the time retirement rolls around decades from now, but only, repeat ONLY, if you keep your hands off it no matter what — a house, a car, college for the kids . . . somehow you have to find the will to make your retirement money untouchable, and that won't be easy.
For those whose time till retirement is measured in years rather than decades, time is your enemy. You have to save more and you've got to be more aggressive in your investments, which means more stocks and fewer bonds and money market funds. Yes, that means additional risk, but you're trying to get richer quicker and that's always been problematical.
Ironically, a survey this year by Opinion Research Corporation International for the CFA found that those with lower incomes are not necessarily destined to a lower standard of living in retirement, nor are higher-income households guaranteed the good life after they quit working.
That's because of the close association between current income and adequate retirement income. Simply put, those with lower incomes will need less in retirement than those who are better off. It's a question of perception and expectations.
"Financial planning has always been available to the wealthiest individuals, but not always to the less fortunate," said Brian L. Hollander, president of DirectAdvice.com, an online investment adviser. "Now, all that has changed. The power and efficiency of the Internet brings comprehensive, affordable financial planning to all levels of American society."
So stop worrying about your failure to plan ahead and get busy making up for lost time, advises Bambi Holzer, investment strategist for Paine Webber. After all, she notes, boomers are the first generation that has ever had to plan for retirement. In the years B.B. (Before Boomers) most people died before they finished working, and those who didn't were taken in by their relatives in what she notes was a "different social structure" than we have today.
So, boomers, we are the retirement planning pioneers. Let's show our kids how it's done.
E-mail: max@desnews.com