1. The baby boomer generation has acquired less wealth and more debt than the generations that have come before them. Baby boomers are also expected to live longer than past generations, too, which is sure to lead to some retirement challenges.
2. The who: The baby boomer generation.
The what: Expected to run into retirement challenges.
The why: Acquired less wealth and more debt than past generations. Also expected to live longer than past generations.
3. Testing the who: Are the baby boomers the only generation with retirement challenges? Does every baby boomer need help? Focusing on the baby boomers can help us develop proper retirement strategies for generations to come to avoid this becoming a reoccurring issue.
Testing the what: Retirement challenges mean different things to different people. What area of retirement should we focus on? How's this generation different from generations of the past?
Testing the why: Why have baby boomers acquired less wealth and more debt? Do economic forces have a role in this opportunity? How much more is the lengthened life expectancy supposed to cost from a retirement standpoint and medical bill stand point?
4. I found in these five interviews that people agree and understand that there is an issue of some sort when it comes to the retirement challenges that face the baby boomer generation. Pin-pointing what exactly that issue is and where it came from was a little harder to come up with. Obviously, retirement isn't a walk in the park, and people can struggle to retire no matter which generation you belong too, but with the average life expectancy growing, this generation is unique from those of the past. Taking what we already know about retirement and focusing on the baby boomer's situations could help us make retirement an easier and less stressful process in the future. Overall, the consensus was that for the time being, the baby boomer generations has to be the main focus and the overwhelming "who" in this opportunity. Now, what is a retirement challenge? is it retiring on-time? retiring with enough money to pay the bills, or enough money to take exotic vacations every other month? From the interviews, I got the sense that this isn't easily definable, but I got the feeling that retirement isn't something that gets stressed as much as it used to be as the old retirement techniques are not nearly as strong today -- like social security. With ~10,000 baby boomers entering retirement each day, what exactly these retirement challenges are will quickly expose themselves. The "why" received the most attention during the interviews as each interviewee brought a new piece to the puzzle. We came up with various reasons why the baby boomers might run into challenges during retirement. For starters, the Great Recession is a possible reason for the below average numbers when it comes to wealth, but even that can't be responsible for the whole mess. The fact that median outstanding debt balance nearly doubled for baby boomers over a 15 year spam. Also, medical bills aside, the extended life expectancy creates more time that these baby boomers need to finance that past generations didn't have to worry about. So, where will this money come from? A definite solution was hard to come up with and the baby boomers might need to sneak past with what they have, but how can we improve from this to benefit generations moving forward?
5. The interviewing process is beneficial in exploring the opportunities we come up with and vetting them for maximum success. Throughout this process, I learned some things about my opportunity discussed above. Although, it may seem like a cut and dry issue at first when you look at it on paper, but once the conversation about the actual opportunity began, I realized that this is a complex web of issues that all play together to affect an entire generation. I also came to the realization that a simple "one size fits all" solution probably won't work for this opportunity that is seemingly a case-by-case issue.
Hey Caelan,
ReplyDeleteI found your opportunity very interesting as well as the results from the interviews that you conducted. In my opportunity, there were definitely new findings that I didn't know existed in the reasoning. I don't think that only baby boomers are the ones with retirement challenges, still other age generations have ones with issues financially and retirement. I agree that the interview process is very beneficial because of exploring opportunities and way to understand the people who are inquiring about the opportunity. Overall this was an informative post that helps with the conflict of financial retirement issues and baby boomers. Great post and information
Hi Caelan!
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting opportunity, one that I had never thought about. However, I think it is a great opportunity that not only baby boomers will find conflict with, but those in more recent generations have also found this to be a challenge especially when it comes to the financial aspect. I definitely think the interview process allows us to uncover certain information, like you did, that we would have never initially taken into consideration. Nice job!
Hi Caelan,
ReplyDeleteThis is an opportunity that I would not have thought about at this stage in my life but it is definitely an important topic. As you discovered in your interviews, it is not a "one size fits all" for your customer base or the reasoning behind the need for this opportunity! I would agree with you that it this is something that needs to be investigated and solved well before Generation X closes in on retirement, as there is not much that can be done at this point for more boomers.