Boomers, Retirement Savings and Divorce: Not a Good Combination
Here’s a quick quiz – which would you rather do: 1) Live in poverty or 2) Live with your spouse? A lot of baby boomers seem to be choosing (1), although they may not actually know it.
Category: United States
Demographics and Your Investments — Part III
The demographics certainly are not the whole story behind why the markets dipped over the past few years, but they were most certainly a contributing factor.
Demographics and Your Investments — Part II
Aging population – market time bomb? Okay, that’s a sensationalistic way to put it, but that’s certainly one of the fears people have about an the shifting demographics in North America. Last time around I looked at how portfolio size tends to trend lower as people go past 65. All things being equal, the […]
Demographics and Your Investments — Part I
Demographic shifts are going to shake up your portfolio. Part I: How portfolios change over a lifetime.
Moving, but Not Up
I like offbeat economic indicators – the number of boats or RVs sold, what colors are in the crayon box, etc. etc. A lot of time they tell you what is going on just as well as some of the stuffier stuff (y’know, GDP and all that) that we all track every day. So I was […]
After the Fall
Now that the U.S. economy looks a just a teensy bit better (I know, I know the National Bureau of Economic Research won’t say that the recession is over, but still) it’s probably okay to start adding up the cost of the crisis. The Pew Research Institute has a new study out that does just […]
A Jobs Boom – But Not for Everyone
Oh the labor shortage thing: it get dredged up every so often, and not without cause. We all know the theory behind it, more or less. The boomers are aging, and they are going ot exit the labor force. The generation coming up behind them was not nearly as plentiful in numbers, so they won’t […]
Generous Generations
Here’s an interesting study (by non-profit consultants Convio) on how the different U.S. generations are doling out money to charity. Turns out that everybody is still pretty generous in their giving (recession or no recession), but that not all charities are doing a good job in reaching the people that might write the checks. Actually, not all […]
Post-Recession Generations Part I
Baby boomers are going to retire and take down the pension system. Generation X is lazy. Generation Y is spoiled and undisciplined, and they’ve pretty much blown out their eardrums by having them stuffed with ipods all the time anyway.
School Days – Just Fewer of Them
How to respond to the Wall Street Journal’s story on four day school weeks a a solution to the state fiscal crisis in the U.S.? The economist in me says wow, `that`s a great inventive solution` while at the same time wondering if its a short sighted one that will lead to poorly educated kids and […]