For a number of years now there has been a cloud over Social Security, brought on by the fact that as the Baby Boomers retire the number of individuals drawing on social security will be greater than the number of individuals paying in. This has been used as a justification and impetus for changes to the Social Security system. But what else will be effected by the retirement of the Boomers?
For a good long time now, the stock market has been seen as the most viable and rewarding investment for individuals, over the long term. Boomers have been investing in the stock market for years, and are expected to in increasing numbers as they get closer to retirement. If you need proof of this, just look at the advertising from Ameriprise Financial, and the focus of many of the other financial advisement firms. But as they grow older, they will change their investments, and eventually pull out of the stock market entirely.
How will this effect the market? Their eagerness to invest in the market has assured that any sell offs of older generations are readily absorbed into the market. But their influence could quite possibly go beyond that. Have the Boomers, in their eagerness, propped up the stock market in much the same way that they have propped up Social Security? If so, to what degree have they done so? Will their exodus from the market take a measured pace, at which younger generations can pick up the slack? Or will it happen at such a rapid clip as to create a panic, and send us into a recession or worse? How will it effect the housing market, will Boomers move into smaller more affordable homes as they grow older? How will their retirement effect the rest of the economy as a whole?
Many of these questions I have, at best, a partial understand of and answer to, and there are many more to which I have no answer at all. It is my intention to more fully explore these questions, and the effects that the Boomers will have on our retirement planning and our economy as a whole. Stay tuned.