[quote=bearishgurl]
Whatever interest rates were at the time these boomers “downsized” was what they were. Some took out small mortgages and others paid cash for their “WWII boxes.” Besides buyers with construction backgrounds/connections (purchasing a principal residence), boomers are the principal buyers of “smallish” antiquated (as brian would say, lol) well-located coastal SFRs. Neither of these two categories of buyers are particularly “interest-rate sensitive.” Boomers have seen and bought during all levels of interest rates, mostly at rates far higher than now. I should know how boomers think, cuz I AM one. They could give a rat’s a$$. They’ll just eventually retire their small mtgs or leave them for their heirs to pay off when they’re gone.
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bg – I’m married to someone firmly in the boomer camp – and I’m on the trailing end of boomers. (born in the early 60’s).
You are right about *some* boomers. But others did not plan for retirement, save, and did the cash out, heloc, atm thing because life was good and life was booming… Then they may have been downsized out of their jobs and it’s very hard to get hired in your 50’s and early 60’s. Add in health issues tend to crop up in these ages – and you’ve got a lot of broke boomers lamenting that the world is unfair.
A report released Tuesday looks at a big segment of that population: baby boomers.
Boomers seemed to be blessed: happy-go-lucky, healthy and wealthy. Everything seemed to tilt in their favor, but then they slammed head-on into the Great Recession.
“One of the harsh realities for boomers, especially brought on by this recession, is their optimistic view of the world has been shattered,” says Matt Thornhill, president of The Boomer Project, a market research company.
He says many older adults have suffered huge investment losses, and nearly one in four doesn’t have enough money for even a modest retirement.
“Those boomers today in their late 50s, early 60s who’ve been unemployed for a handful of years now, can’t find a job, find themselves up against health crises and unexpected expenses — they’re just ill-equipped to deal with it,” Thornhill says.
And while those boomers have always seemed comfortably comfortable, the reality is that those ages 50 to 64 have been unemployed longer than other adults, and some 8.5 million have no health coverage.
Baby boomers have even more reasons—11.6 trillion of them—to thank the Greatest Generation. According to a new study, the boomer generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) will inherit that many dollars, largely from their parents.
All of this is my way of saying you can’t generalize about boomer’s finances… It’s too big a cross section and the economy hit many boomers hard.
