Boomers are all shook up

Associated Press

CHICAGO — The events of Sept. 11 left no American generation unshaken. And baby boomers, till now little scarred by hardship or tragedy, might be the most jolted of all.

How quickly those 76 million members of the "me generation" recover their confidence, and to what extent they change their outlook, is likely to determine where the economy heads next.

"They are probably the generation that’s the most shocked," said Ann Fishman, president of New Orleans-based Generational Targeted Marketing Corp. "Everybody’s worried about the kids, but boomers have lived through a rather easy generational life span. There was a feeling of safety, that this kind of thing couldn’t happen."

The preceding generation, she noted, was shaped by Pearl Harbor and World War II. But aside from those who served in Vietnam, boomers had largely experienced disaster only from a distance.

"We feel uncharacteristically helpless and scared, and I don’t know that this is a generation that’s used to feeling scared," said Betsy Carter, editor of My Generation, the AARP’s new magazine for baby boomers.

Even before the terrorist attacks, boomers had at least temporarily lost some of their swagger.

The government’s consumer confidence index for August showed that the index for households headed by 35- to 54-year-olds — predominantly boomers, those born from 1946-64 — fell from the previous month at the same time it rose for those older and younger.

The catastrophe has further dented that self-assurance and caused boomers to reorder their financial priorities.

"Everybody had already watched their retirement funds, their savings, shrink because of the contraction of the economy. This lands another punch on top of that," said Robert Wendover, managing director of the Center for Generational Studies in Aurora, Colo.

"There are a lot of baby boomers who will make mistakes now by shifting out of investments that they shouldn’t, in the rush to security."

For a generation that has always tended to spend now and save later, the timing is particularly bad.

"Unfortunately, a lot of boomers are at the most costly stage of their lives," said Lynne Lancaster, a 43-year-old boomer who heads the BridgeWorks consulting firm in Sonoma, Calif., and is the author of a new book called When Generations Collide.

Two weeks isn’t long enough to gauge the generational impact. But so far, boomers have changed in at least one way — they’re giving to different charities.

Eileen Heisman, president of the National Philanthropic Trust, says boomers have always given to causes and smaller, grass-roots organizations — environmental groups, women’s organizations, land preservation. They have instead been giving instead to larger mainstream organizations. They also are using philanthropy as a way to teach their children about giving.

Fear of the unknown, a first for many, has already prompted talk of postponed retirements and other sacrifices. But Carter suggests the shock will cause many boomers to take their eyes off the bottom line and work goals and savor what they have.

"I think a lot of people are going to head for the hills and say ‘I don’t have so much money any more, but so what?’ " she said. ‘"If I don’t have a Volvo, I’ll at least have a beat-up pickup. And I’ll enjoy what time I have left.’ "