Intensely active older men and women who have the means and see the twilight years as just another stage of exploration are pushing further and harder, tossing aside presumed limitations. And the global travel and leisure industry, long focused on youth, is racing to keep up.
“This is an emerging market phenomenon based on tens of millions of longer-lived men and women with more youth vitality than ever imagined,” said Ken Dychtwald, a psychologist and author who has written widely about aging and economics.
And the so-called experiential marketplace ”” sensation, education, adventure and culture, estimated at $56 billion and growing, according to a new study from George Washington University ”” is where much of that new old-money is headed.
At the Grand Circle Corporation, for example, a Boston-based company that specializes in older travelers, adventure tours have gone from 16 percent of passenger volume in 2001 to 50 percent for advance bookings this year, even as the average traveler’s age has risen to 68 from 62.
My mother (aged 80) goes on these trips annually. I do not begrudge it of her. However, I do note that both her trips and those of the folks in this article are made possible by the fact that the generations below 65 pay for the elder’s health care. Neither my mother (who would have spent most of her discretionary income on the breast cancer she successfully fought a few years ago), nor most other oldsters would be able to afford a retirement characterized by incessant travel, education and adventure if they were paying what Medicare really costs, or if they had paid taxes to cover what their retirement really costs, instead of relying on government borrowing, with resultant inflation, largely paid for by current (and future) generations.
If the folks 18-65 were freed of the taxes including the hidden taxes of inflation by government spending with debasement of the dollar, as well as the hidden tax of high private health care which subsidizes medicare/medicaid) that prop up the current chosen, they also could be “vital” and “energetic” etc.
It is a golden age, and I am glad my mother is enjoying it. I do not anticipate that I will enjoy such a “golden age” nor do I anticipate that my children or grandchildren will enjoy such a golden age.
Unfortunately somebody needs to pay the bills. That would appear to be us.
Good point(s) clueless.
Hmmm… But old age is unavoidably an inevitably-ending adventure.
I fully expect to feel young again in the resurrection.
several years ago, I went to post-church coffee hour wearing a jacket with that Saturday’s Okemo ski pass still attached. a little old widowed lady stopped me and cried out .. “Okemo! That was our favorite!!! But we had to give up skiing when we turned 84”. Something to aspire to!
Besides the other good points in the comments, all this wonderful self-discovery and horizon-expanding assumes a prosperous late-1990s-like economy not the one we’ve got now and for some time to come. Once the boomers start retiring [i]en masse[/i] watch the system crack even more.
The point behind this article is the question whether we remain active, keeping our minds and bodies in the best shape possible, or whether we roll over and give in to the aging process. I turn 65 this year and because I have a challenging ministry and keep my mind and body in reasonable shape, I hope I am in the sort of shape that means I have another twenty years or so of active Christian service ahead of me. I have a relative who is a little younger than me who retired at sixty and is already showing those telltale signs of starting to move into a dependent old age. I suspect that all this is actually about having a purpose in life that stretches us.
PS All this elder power could be a real boon to the church were we to challenge it properly and make good use of it