Scary Stuff

Turning to something a bit less Spielberg-ish, I refer you to Linda Koco’s article in our Advising Boomers section on page 20. This deals with something so scary on a personal level that many baby boomers don’t want to face it: getting older.

Not only do boomers not want to deal with getting older, but they also don’t want to hear about the likelihood of living a lot longer and as a consequence outliving the money they have accumulated for retirement.

Yes, we’re back in familiar boomer territory here, back on the banks of denial, that big river in Egypt.

First, these funds that have been saved for retirement are not all that big to begin with in the case of many boomers. It’s been well documented that there is a widespread underestimation across the demographic about how much wherewithal is necessary to support a lifestyle in retirement to which one has become accustomed in one’s working years. And when those working years have been characterized by a spend, spend, spend mentality that is compounded with the accumulation of mountainous debt, well…scary stuff, indeed.

As Gregory Theis, an investment advisor with Woodbury Financial Services in Homer Glen, Ill., told Ms. Koco: “Few realize they have to change how they handle their money now in order to have enough money to last for a potentially very long life.”

In both these cases–a possible pandemic and outliving your savings–there’s an inability to face the fact that disasters do happen. And it’s not always to somebody else.

Steve Piontek

Editor-in-Chief

Trying to get your mind around a worldwide pandemic where millions are killed is just not something most people can do or have any inclination to do. Yet in such a calamity there will be localized pockets of death with tolls in the thousands.”