How will baby boomer retirements differ from our parents?

[retirementguy]

Something that I’ve wondered about – will baby boomers retire in the same ways that our parents did. Maybe I am just an overconfident, ungrateful SOB, but it seems like we can probably do a better job at it than they did. Although when I really think about it, probably not. So what do you think – will we do a better job of retirement, have more fun than our parents?
Question

[Boomer1]

Heh, baby boomers are just plain lucky. Our parents blazed some trails. Now there whacko retirement ideas (living in an aviation based retirement community) are mainstream. All we have to do is take them a little further. And the good news is that there are so many of the active adult developers can't come up with new ideas fast enough!

[jfb48]

My take is a lot of baby boomers' retirement will be indistinguishable from their parents. If they move far away, they'll move somewhere where their friends already live. They will mostly play golf in a gated community surrounded by fellow boomers. They will do a little volunteer work.

Sure there will be some mavericks, but they will be the exception, not the mainstream.

[retirementguy]

Interesting. You make me think that one of the blessings of being a baby boomer is that we have the freedom to be different. Most of the conventions have been broken. So in the past there might have been some stigma attached to finding an "alternative" retirement, now no one would think twice about it.

[luvkeywest]

My pet peeve about baby boomers and baby boomer retirement is all of the people who get the numbers wrong. At one point there were 76 (or 7 million boomers - but many are dead now (and some in younger generations might be relieved to know they're not making any more of them!). Latest census figures i've seen show the number is down to 72 million or so. Still, a lot of people in this age group.