The boomers are coming - again

Yes, the boomers are coming. In fact, millions have already punched their retirement ticket and millions more would have followed if not for the messy financial meltdown of 2008, which shrank their savings and kept them working longer than they would have liked.

The market swoon not only hamstrung the boomers financially, it also, at least to some degree, reshaped their personalities, according to separate boomer studies from Allianz Life and MetLife Mature Market Institute.

Before 2008 we thought we knew the boomers. They were easy to categorize. They were the resilient, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants risk takers, who’d get knocked down and get up. They could go belly up in that scheme to build a water park in Arizona and they’d dust themselves off and head back to the savings and loan for the next wide-eyed financial adventure.