Lina Ko September 23rd, 2008
According to the Ottawa Citizen, today’s young adults are increasingly gravitating towards the fine dining, good wine, and luxurious travel that usually only retiring boomers can afford. Raised by their baby boomer parents to appreciate a greater range of cultural experiences and reaping the rewards of higher education, more people in their 20s and early 30s are indulging themselves in their downtime and proving to be savvy, high-end consumers.
The young kids may not be just spending their parents’ money – they work hard and play hard, but want to enjoy life as well. They also don’t have familial obligations and they are focusing more on their career and have more of a disposable income to use at their will.
Young adults are outpacing their older counterparts – even the boomers who first made wine a mainstream taste in North America – in how much they drink and how much they fork out for a good bottle, according to research conducted last summer by the Wine Market Council in the U.S. Forty-seven percent of those aged 31 and younger are drinking more wine, the survey found, compared to 37 percent of those aged 32 to 43 and 27 percent of boomers aged 44 to 62.
Fine dining for the 20-something group used to mean family-friendly chains. But over the past five years, more are choosing high-end places and arriving with genuine knowledge of what’s on the menu and wine list.
All my boomer friends, in my opinion, are doing everything they can to ‘spoil’ their kids. They want to give them everything they didn’t have when they were growing up. Coupled with their own philosophy to enjoy life while they can, young adults certainly have a different attitude towards life when compared to the boomer generation.
Lina Ko September 15th, 2008
According to a 2007 survey by Statistics Canada, one-third of older workers approaching retirement age say they are worried about whether they will have adequate income when they leave the workforce. Concern about the adequacy of their finances to live through retirement is most prevalent among lower-income workers and recent immigrants, aged 45 to 59.
The report was received with mixed feelings. A private sector analyst said it’s not the poor, but middle-income Canadians who should be most concerned. The Stats Can report found that three in 10 older workers have not had any retirement planning advice, roughly the same proportion as it found who are concerned about the adequacy of their finances to carry them through retirement. According to Terrence Yuen, senior economist with the Canadian Research and Innovation Centre Watson Wyatt Worldwide, the low-income workers can probably manage on the public pension system, but mid-income workers are more worried as they don’t have the savings to maintain their current lifestyles.
For those aged 55 or over, it’s probably too late for them to accumulate the necessary level of savings. There is also evidence suggesting that Canadians in their late 40s and early 50s have pushed back their planned age of retirement. While few plan to work beyond age 65, the report noted that labour force participation rates among 65- to 69-year-olds have returned to very high levels.
While most leading-edge boomers can get by if they retire at 65, it’s their quality of life that they are worried about!
Lina Ko September 8th, 2008
How often do baby boomers forget their car keys or get frustrated about forgetting people’s names even though they are at the tip of their tongues? The answer is way too often. So it’s probably welcoming news for ageing boomers when a natural health product, protecting the human memory function, called VIVIMIND was just introduced last week by OVOS Natural Health. VIVIMIND is backed by 15 years of scientific research, including clinical testing with over 2,000 individuals in 50 U.S. and 17 Canadian medical centres.
Forgetfulness about small things in our daily lives can be associated with a condition called Age Associated Memory Impairment. According to Dr. Ruth Anne Baron, a naturopathic doctor practicing in Toronto, most people get very concerned when their memory starts letting them down. “We should take measures to keep our brains healthy, and VIVIMIND may play an important role to protect memory function as we get older,” she said. VIVIMIND is a patented, natural-health tablet based on the naturally occurring ingredient homotaurine – a natural amino acid with unique properties, found in certain seaweed.
OVOS Natural Health is a client of mine and I study with interest how the new product could play an important role in protecting memory function as boomers age.