Retirement housing providers falling foul of the OFT

Not many people know that when you buy a retirement property, especially if it is in a ‘village’ you, or more likely your heirs, will presented with a bill of up to 10% of the property's price, when it is sold. That’s a lot of money and that's what the Office of Fair Trading thought.

Here is an example from the Q&A section Richmond Village's web site.

Question: “If we move out of the village, or upon our death, how is our property sold and is there a charge?”

Answer: “We will market your apartment on your behalf, and deal with all enquiries and show rounds and charge an assignment fee of 6% - 10% depending how long you have been living in the village. This fee is deducted from the market price on the sale of the apartment to cover sale costs and a share of the capital cost of the facilities.

This is what the OFT said: “We have announced an investigation into the contracts signed by occupants of purpose built owner occupied retirement homes. The OFT considers that a number of terms on exit fees in these contracts may be unfair and so may breach the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations (UTCCRs).

The OFT is issuing formal written notices to 26 retirement home firms setting out its concerns over terms on exit fees charged when residents sell or rent their properties.

It sounds to me like a lot of these companies have just lost a large slug of the capital value of their properties. That is going to make a rather large hole in their balance sheets. Anybody from the retirement property world want to comment or are you all in a state of shock! Not the sort of Xmas present a property developer wants. Dick Stroud

Names mean different things to different ages of people

I have recently been in contact with Danny Altman who is the Founder and CEO of A Hundred Monkeys – now that is a name that gets your attention.

Danny was telling me about some work he did for a retirement homes company that shows how the connotations of a name varies by the age of the ear. This is his story

We have a naming and branding company in San Francisco and found ourselves working for three non-profit companies that merged into one group that ran 15 big retirement homes.

So we dived in and toured all the facilities and had a great time talking to the residents, aged 60 to about 95. We went through a long process and ultimately decided to go with the name Front Porch, which we thought was pretty laid back and friendly – definitely non-institutional.

Well some of the residents didn’t exactly agree with us. There was a minor revolt because some of them thought that Front Porch meant we were portraying them as old folks in rocking chairs, which was the last thing we were trying to do.
After the excitement died down, they got used to the idea. And as you can see, the overall image was pretty young and hip.

What’s the moral of the story? Most people who are over the hill are apparently not ready to be put out to pasture.

As you can see, the Front Porch web site is definitely not your usual ‘retirement’ type design. I think it is the most extreme example of an uncluttered site I have seen and all the better for that. How fascinating that the term “Front Porch” can have such different meanings and create so much angst. Dick Stroud

Massive jump in people working beyond the age of 65

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development reckons the proportion of older workers planning to work beyond the state pension age has increased by 31% in the past two years.

This has lots of implications. The longer people work the more they spend, even though they may say they are continuing working to save. The longer they work the less they fit the stereotype of the retired person that most companies appear to think is the norm.

Marketers need to do a reboot, download the latest updates and ensure their perception of the world bears some resemblance to the reality. Dick Stroud

Working longer – spending longer

Metlife Mature Markets produces some good research. “Buddy can you spare a job” doesn’t tell us anything profoundly new but reinforces the picture that is emerging on both sides of the Atlantic of older people putting off retirement – for one reason or another. The other side to this news is that people will be spending money for longer. Dick Stroud

Retirement Revolution – new reality

The Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company has sponsored a TV series - The Retirement Revolution Series – that is a 90-minute national documentary series broadcast by PBS that looks at the financial, social and health challenges facing Americans.

Why don’t European companies do something like this? Why don’t European companies understand to use their own YouTube channels? Dick Stroud

Silverville – life in a UK retirement village

The programme describes itself as: “following the lives and loves of some of the 350 residents of a new retirement village in Milton Keynes. How will they cope - and how can they thrive - as they get to grips with a different way of living?”

The first programme was shown last evening but can be still be viewed (if you are in the UK) using BBC iplayer.

I am not sure what to make of it. I fear that the need for human interest stories will dominate what could be a fascinating subject. Probably best to wait until the end of the series to comment. Dick Stroud

New HSBC report about retirement

HSBC has published its fifth annual Future of Retirement study.

All a bit doom and gloom. The results show that nearly 9 out of 10 people are not feeling fully prepared for their retirement. I would have thought it would have been 9.9 out of 10.

The bottom line of this document is that most people are clueless about their pensions, they don’t have enough saved and have no idea how they will support themselves during retirement. What the report doesn’t say is that the same comments apply to most of the national governments.

A nice glossy report with lots of graphs etc but doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Dick Stroud

Even more about the recession and the 50-plus

Today’s FT has an article about the “increase in part-time pensioners”. What it is really about is the need for older people to keep or restart working to make ends meet. Here are a few of the tasty bits of information

• Norwich Union said it had seen nearly a 50% per cent increase in people taking income from their pension while leaving it invested in the stock market, compared with a year ago. It believes this is evidence that more people are phasing their retirement.
• Scottish Life and Standard Life are seeing more people than usual were phasing their purchase of an income from their pension.
• A report on the impact of the recession on older workers, to be published next week by Help the Aged and Age Concern, will show 60% of the 50-plus may have to work longer than planned because of the downturn.
• An economist at Architas, Axa's fund management company, estimates that people will have to work a further six years on average in order to have the same level of income in retirement they would have had before markets crashed.

Of course none of this applies the public sector workers who receive their pensions irrespective of what happens to the economy.

Unbelievably, one of the reasons why people in the private sector will have to work longer is to enable government employees to retain their ludicrous pension rights.

If you detect a note of anger/contempt/envy/disgust, you are right! Dick Stroud

US consumers reconsider retirement

McKinsey has just published some research about how the recession has affected Americans views about when they intend to retire.

The company publishes something it calls the Retirement Readiness Index. This measures the financial preparedness of households to retire. It is currently at 63, whilst 100 represent the level necessary to maintain a current standard of living. A figure of 80 represents what is is necessary to avoid making large reductions in spending on basics needs such as housing, food and health care.

The above chart shows the attitude of different types of people to their retirement plans.

Note that the high net worth group is the one intending to delay their retirement the longest.

What does this mean? I guess it is a combination of two things. The high net worth group probably has more opportunities to extend their period of time working AND they understand the dire nature of the way the recession has impacted people’s wealth. The Mass Market is living in cloud cuckoo land. Dick Stroud

A different take on West Side Story

It will only take a minute.

If you know the tunes from West Side Story and have any knowledge of the US retirement jargon then you should really enjoy this Walt Handelsman cartoon/animation take on the trials and tribulations of the US 50-plus as they face an unsure financial future.

You just have to laugh otherwise.......

Many thanks to Reg Starkey for sending me the link. Dick Stroud

The future looks bleak for American retirees

Thanks to Rick for telling me about this data published in the WSJ.

A full copy of the research, upon which the article was based, can be downloaded from the Employee Benefit Research Council.

These are the points from the WSJ article.

• Among current retirees, only 20% -- versus 41% in 2007 -- are very confident of being able to afford a financially secure retirement.
• 25% say they expect to have enough to pay for medical expenses, down from 41% in 2007.
• 34% are optimistic about covering their basic expenses, compared with 48% two years ago.

The age at which workers say they plan to retire has crept up from a median of 62 in 1991 to 65 since 2004, with almost half of current retirees say they left the work force sooner than expected due to health problems, downsizings or obsolete skills.

Most worrying is that the survey has consistently found that about two-thirds of workers plan to work after retiring whist fewer than 35% of current retirees say they have actually held down jobs at some point during retirement. Where goeth the US the UK is bound to follow.

It doesn't need me to explain the impact this change of sentiment will have on consumer spending of retirees. Mmmm. Dick Stroud

The pluses (and negatives) of being 50-plus

Back in February I was sent a copy of The Rainbow Years: The Pluses of Being 50+, a book by Barrie Hopson and Mike Scally.

We are now into April and the book remains unread. Pressure of work and all of that stuff...

Last weekend I had an old friend staying who started to read the book and kept reading. If it had this effect on Robert then it must be doing a lot of things right since he is the sort of guy who gives short shrift to waffle and psychobabble.

As he departed I thrust the book in his hand and asked him to write a short review - this is what he said.

Written largely in the format of a workbook, it follows a path of individual life review and assessment - a personal SWOT analysis, supported with helpful articles and anecdotes to encourage clear and informed future life decision making for those traditionally approaching retirement.

However, as one actually in the target age group, there is much to be commended in this extension to the Rainbow theme. Firstly there is the purely practical discipline of the section by section approach. After all, few of us really plan beyond the immediate arrival of an event, and many stop full time work honestly admitting that they really don’t know what they are going to do.

Preparation provided by employers in the past is increasingly rare, and with job continuity so much less secure than it was, opportunity for detailed planning is limited and unguided. Consequently whilst I can see the described process forming a framework for seminars and group approaches, the Rainbow workbook is more likely to come into its own as a personal tool for those aware that they should be planning for change, but lacking support as to structure.

The authors however, go beyond the pure retirement consideration. It references directly the massive change in prospective longevity combined with improved health. It focuses the mind on the range of alternatives other than moving from work to retirement in one fell swoop. Discussion identifies the wealth potential in over 50`s, yet is sufficiently up to date to note the life inconsistencies between capital wealth and pension income over a possible non working period of 40 or 50 years.

The authors suggest a future “norm” of a “mixed activity” which could contain traditional or charitable work, pure recreation, physical and mental stimuli, continued over many years.

The essential difference which they highlight in this “third age” is the matter of choice. Never before has a generation been so placed as to be able to decide their later life balance, or to have so long to regret a lack of planning. No longer driven by necessity to absolute ambition and earnings to the detriment of other things, but aware that only so much golf or so many holidays are possible before frustration kicks in, the new over 50`s may have the same opportunity to shape their future as they had at 20, largely without the same fear and pressure, but potentially with the same anticipation and satisfaction.

To be recommended to anyone over 50 needing to reshape their future, to any prospective retiree stumbling myopically into the future, and even to those already retired, but honest enough to admit that they are not enjoying life as they might have hoped!

Clearly the book worked for Robert. If you are interested in the 50-plus market then the book provides you with insights into the options, decisions and the range of emotions swelling around in the heads of your target customers. Sounds like a good buy to me. Dick Stroud

Kübler-Ross model finds new application

Come on admit it. I bet you have never heard of the Kubler-Ross model of the five stages of grief.

The model was first introduced in Ms Kubler-Ross’s 1969 book "On Death and Dying" and describes the five stages that people pass through when coming to terms with grief, especially the diagnosis of a terminal illness or catastrophic loss.

The guys at Harvard (The HBR Editor’s blog) reckon that this model might be appropriate to the way people are responding to these troubled economic times. They reason that most people appear to be stuck in one of the first four phases - denial ("this simply can't be happening!"), anger ("string up the evil bankers!") , bargaining ("I'm calling a credit counselor!"), and depression ("goodbye, Future!").

They don’t think, and I agree, that few if any people (and here I am talking about marketers) have reached the acceptance stage ("Hello, Reality").

This blog entry is well worth a read as is the Wikipedia description of the model.

What is interesting to speculate is the speed at which the different age groups will reach the Acceptance Phase and how they will deal with it. How will the 50-plus react when they realise that the wealth they expected to fund their retirement has dimished by 30-50% - that their kids will be hanging around for a lot longer whilst they try and find a job and raise enough money to buy a home – that their dreams of a retirement of fulfilling and useful activities has been replaced with having to find a way of supplementing their diminishing income. Not nice – is it.

So Mr, Mrs and Ms Marketer this is the world you are going to have to inhabit when you try and market to the older market. Dick Stroud

Retirement retires - maybe

There has been a splurge of news about the way that older people are changing their views about the ‘R’ word.

According to the UK’s financial services company, Prudential: "”More than two million people are delaying retirement this year because of the global downturn and a fall in value of their investments – only 25% of those delaying drawing their pension in 2009 expect they will be able to retire before 2012, with an even higher number – 42% expect it will be 2012 or beyond before they can stop working, and 23% believe they will never be able to afford to retire.”

A recent YouGov report says that only a third of people aged 55-plus said they would retire at the date they had previously planned - 20% said they would be forced to work between two and four years longer, while 15% said they would have to work five or more years extra to make up the shortfall in their pension.

Things don’t sound that much different in the US. In a study conducted by Scottrade, only 32% thought they would be able to retire — ever — compared with 39% in a similar survey last year. Nearly 75% of Boomers fear full retirement will not be an option for them.

Unfortunately, the intention might be to continue working but The European Court of Justice ruled this morning that the UK’s law, where people can be forced to retire at 65, is not a breach of EU legislation – as long as it had ‘a legitimate aim related to employment and social policy’.

Needless to say, with UK companies falling over themselves to reduce headcount you can expect a lot of 65 year olds picking up their gold watch and heading for the door. Dick Stroud

Ruppies are not the same as Rupees or Boomers

I have to say I have never heard of the term Ruppies, maybe I should, but I haven’t. Apparently it describes: “retired urban people who are active mature adults and predominantly affluent empty nesters.”

This paper makes out an interesting case for how your Ruppie differs from a bog standard Boomer. A lot of the argument is around their preference for urban rather than rural living and their desire to keep working and working. Methinks that the last 18 months have probably changed a lot of the thinking of Ruppies and Boomers alike. Dick Stroud

Retirement - what's that?

If the following statements from this week’s Business Week are correct, and I think they are, then there is a traumatic change taking place to the dynamics of the market. None of its ideas are new, but when they all appear in the same place it highlights the magnitude that is unfolding.

The recession is making clear what we've suspected for a long time. The concept of not working and embracing leisure for the last third of one's life isn't practical for most people.

Put it this way: Survey after survey has shown that a majority of aging baby boomers plan on working in retirement. Well, that plan is coming true.

A seismic shift in the economy and workplace is making it easier for an aging population to labour longer. An information- and services-dominated economy will ease the transition to longer working lives.

The day of retirement reckoning is here for less happy reasons, too. For the second time in eight years, savers have watched in horror as their pension savings and other retirement savings were hit with sharp declines. This time around, the household wealth destruction is even greater because of the nationwide fall in home prices.

But wait, there's more: The funding of social security is widely acknowledged to be broken and is a strain on family finances. Even with Medicare coverage (in the UK’s case the NHS) after age 65, the elderly are finding it necessary to pay for a greater percentage of their overall medical bill.

The solution: work longer.

The writer of the article throws in a few crumbs of hope.

More than making ends meet, work is physically and mentally energizing. It keeps the mind active and dementia at bay. For many people, the workplace is a social environment, with birthday celebrations and coffee klatches. To be sure, you may want to say goodbye to your current office mates for the last time. But that doesn't mean you won't want to work.

The next article in Business Week is about why “Hard-pressed companies forced to make layoffs tend to cut younger workers while retaining those over 55.”

This seems to be the reverse from what is happening in the UK.

The article continues…

Companies nationwide are laying off workers by the tens of thousands. But many are trying to spare the post-55 set from the axe, a reversal of the top-down trends in past waves of layoffs. They're being driven by legal concerns—since boomers are in a protected age group—and by a need to keep experienced hands in place to keep the companies running and positioned for an upturn. "Seniority matters," says the director of the Sloan Centre on Aging & Work at Boston College.

What the hell is going on?

Sorry, but don’t look to me for the answers. Right now all I can do is try and gather and understand the data.

But, just think about what all this means for a post-recession world. Yes, I know that seems a long way away but it is a place some of us might see. The scars of this recession will take years, decades to heal. What we marketers must do is to try and understand what the new market vista will look like and then get on with the job of modifying our marketing to take advantage of it. Dick Stroud

A good publication about retirement

I find most publications about retirement depressing. A glimpse into a world where I don’t want to go. When you read the next couple of blog postings you will conclude it is a world that few of us will see!

I have just had a look ‘The Mature Guide to Retirement Living’ and reckon it is really good. The layout, style and imagery make it something that I would want to read.

The author, Tony Watts, who set up the Mature Times in 1991 said: “There’s no one single approach to retirement, because what each individual can do is often heavily determined by their health – physical and financial ….all you can do is provide the information people need and let them make their own decisions. Any other approach would be patronising.”

Definitely worth the £7.95. Phone 01275 331933 and I am sure they will be delighted to take your credit card number. Dick Stroud

Debt and the over-50s

Any research from an organisation, with a vested interest in the subject, has to be viewed for what it is: “something to grab press coverage”.

Payplan, describes itself as the UK’s leading provider of free debt solutions and states that there is a growing problem with indebted ‘pre-retirees’ (aged 50-60) who have average unsecured debts of £41,400. This is 25% higher than the average unsecured debts of other age groups (£32,700).

Not only are ‘pre-retirees’ in significantly more debt that other age groups but it also takes them longer to pay back this debt: their average repayment term in a debt management plan is 11 years, compared with 9 years for other groups. This gap has increased by 27%, suggesting that debt for ‘pre-retirees’ is a growing problem.

Since this research was done before the current round of market turmoil, one can only assume things are going to get worse.

Clearly there are some, probably a lot, of the 50-plus who are not too bright in handling their financial affairs. However, the older age group is sitting on a pile more housing equity than the young. Every day that goes by, more young people will drop into negative equity. That's bad, but its impact on their willingness to spend, will a real nightmare for companies.

We are in for a monsoon of doom and gloom stories. We need to be on our guard to distinguish between the real and manfactured stories. Dick Stroud

Who exhibits at a “Retirement Show”

I have already written a few words about the London Retirement Show. I thought it would be interesting to look at the profile of the types of organisations exhibiting. This is Dick Stroud’s “best guess” at the category of each of the 132 exhibitors. Plus or minus a couple of percent I think it is reasonably accurate.

Some observations:

Loads of Charities etc

About what I expect in the way of Finance and Holiday companies

Much lower numbers of property and care providers than I would expect.

Two of my chums were exhibiting and both were delighted at the numbers of people who attended. Both organisations learnt some interesting lessons from the exercise.

Clearly this sort of exhibition is not for all types of organisations targeting the older age group but it clearly works for some. It will be interesting to hear from the exhibitors about the age profile of attendees. My best guess is a median age of close 70 years old. Dick Stroud

Living in the 21st century: older people in England

A major report has just been released about the reality of ageing in England. When I say major I mean major. It is 316 pages long and is comes with a great pedigree.

Here is the press release from the PA. As you would expect the press release is written for headline grabbing – nothing wrong with that.

Nearly a third - or 30% - of men aged between 60 and 64 years old said they expected to carry on working past the age of 65 in 2006/07, compared with 25% questioned in 2002/03.

Life expectancy had increased at an astonishing rate.

The poorest elderly people were more than twice as likely to die as the richest over a given period

Once I have had a read I will comment some more. Dick Stroud

Old at 65 - is there life after 64?

Yesterday’s Observer had an interesting and amusing article about the trauma/delight of reaching 65.

Once you had got over the much-used example of Mick reaching 65 and onto 'ordinary people', some you might have heard of, most who will be a mystery, it became very amusing. There is the full mix of emotions of what it is like reaching retirement age (in the UK).

I was struck by the total mismatch between the way these people feel and the stereotypes of 65 year olds that still litter the world of marketing.

When you have a spare 5 mins have a look.

People you might have heard about on reaching 65
Jonathan Aitken “I actually feel a slight relief that I'm not 25 anymore... I've found peace”
Rose Tremain “I suppose 65 is considered retirement age, but writers don't retire”
Des Lynam “Age definitely matters; you can't roll the clock back”
John Eliot Gardiner “I feel happier now and more on course than I did at 45”

People you probably haven’t heard about
Anne Jones “I would dispute the idea that 65 is elderly”
Margaret Ellison “people of my age have had a wonderful period of history to live through”
Ramesh Verma “It makes me angry when people ask when I'm going to retire. Why should I?”
Dave McManus “I thought I'd be retired by 60”

Dick Stroud

The Retirement Show

Last year I was very rude about a Retirement Show that was held in London.

I committed two cardinal sins of marketing. Firstly, extrapolating my personal prejudices to the whole of the older age group. Secondly, making comments without attending the thing and seeing with my eyes.

The show is on again this year. I will either attend it and then comment or keep stum. Dick Stroud

Americans Delay Retirement

This is the title of a very interesting article recently published in the WSJ - thanks Rick for telling me about it.
I wasn’t that impressed with the article’s tag lines

As Housing, Stocks Swoon - Nest Eggs Shrink, Deferring Dreams; 'Freaked Out' Elite.

More appropriate for the US equivalent of a “red top” than its main financial paper.

The bottom line of the article is that as property prices fall and stock markets erode their savings, many older Americans are delaying retirement. A recent Schwab survey of its financial advisers found that nearly a quarter of clients were considering working longer, specifically because of the economic fallout of the past 12 months.

Like the UK, the concept of a company pension scheme is quickly becoming the exception than the rule. Over the past three decades, the 401(k) plan (The UK’s equivalent of “Money Purchase” scheme) has gradually replaced pension plans as the main source of retirement coverage for U.S. workers in the private sector. In 1979, 62% of U.S. employees participated only in a pension plan. By 2005, 63% of workers only participated in a 401(k) plan. The trouble with these schemes is that they are exposed to the fluctuations in the world’s equity markets. Not a nice thought.

I have yet to think through the implications of a widespread delay of people leaving the workforce. Needless to say its impact will be significant.

I am note sure if you can still read the article (The WSJ is a subscription paper) – here is the link. Dick Stroud

Retire Retirement

Retire Retirement is a book by Tamara Erickson and published by the Harvard Business Press.A review appears in today’s FT.

I have not read the book so I cannot comment if it is fair and accurate. The reviewer’s main gripe is the sweeping generalisation that are made about Boomers and how they differ from other generations.

Generation Y has been particularly influenced by the rise of global terrorism, for instance. So, says Erickson, they live for the moment. Both Generation X and Y are keener on their network of friends than pursuing success at work. But by Erickson's own admission this is a simplistic way to look at individuals: "Of course, any broad characterisation of a group omits much of the important detail that makes us unique."

This rings bells with me and is typical of much that is written about the 50-plus market. However, I do have some sympathy with the writer who is forced into these crude stereotypes.

Most marketers and certainly all journalists want simple answers to complex problems. When you start to explain the shades of grey that exist you can sense the attention evaporate. It is the PowerPoint test. If you cannot answer the question in five bullet points on a slide then you have got the wrong answer or maybe the wrong question. Dick Stroud

12 people who are changing US retirement

You need to read this WSJ article in the next seven days, after then it goes on to subscription only.

Here are a couple of more links that may or may not be available after seven days. The main Web page about retirement and a podcast about the subject.

So who are these pioneers who are shaping the way Americans will live, work and play later in life? Well one of them is Joseph Coughlin who describes his work as "trying to get people to 'age cool.' ”He is the director of AgeLab, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A smart guy.

The others I recognised are Eric Dishman (Intel), Michael Merzenich (Posit Science), William Thomas (Eden Project) and a John Rother (AARP).

The others, in case you are interested are William Bengen, John Erickson, Charles Feeney, Katherine Freund, Sheryl Garrett, Bernard Osher and John Stewart.

Perhaps my American friends recognise these names? I have to say I am a bit peeved not to be listed (joke) - I am sure it is bias against Brits. Dick Stroud

The Tripadvisor of retirement communities?

This is the first time I have bumped into TopRetirements.com.

Here is how the site describes itself.

Topretirements.com is where real people share honest opinions about the best places to retire. This Web 2.0 site was launched in late 2006 with the goal of helping the 78 million baby boomers now starting to turn 60 make more informed decisions about where they should live in retirement.

Our guiding lights are - you have to live somewhere, retirement gives you the freedom to start over fresh, so you might as well make an informed decision!

I think it going a bit over the top with the Web 2.0 stuff but the basic idea of a Tripadvisor site for places to retire might just work. The site’s discussion forums aren’t that well used, but that's never a shock.

There is a free download of a location selection guide. Whilst it doesn’t reveal any earth shattering issues it still asks some worthwhile questions that I bet most people don’t consider before moving.

I am doing a lot of work in the retirement property business and I know what a massive decision moving house is for people (certainly in the UK). A web site that can provide information and insights might just work since there is a huge amount of money associated with relocation. Dick Stroud

Retirement housing – a few interesting ideas

The concept of ‘cohousing’ is one I haven’t heard before. Well there is an association for ‘it’ in the US.

Cohousing (according to the Web site) is a type of collaborative housing where residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighbourhoods. The developments are usually attached or single-family homes along one or more pedestrian streets or clustered around a courtyard. They range in size from 7 to 67 residences, the majority of them housing 20 to 40 households.

There is a sub-group of cohousing for older people. In Europe there are examples of groups of likeminded people coming together to have their own properties and supporting facilities created. This has always sounded a nice idea in theory but I have always wondered how it works out in practice. What it does indicate is the demand for a more personalised version of retirement housing that will be required in the coming years.

The conference of Australia’s Retirement Village Association produced some interesting research.

Here are few of the factlets (well more like observations) that emerged during the presentations:

The largest sector of over-55s will stay in their own homes with rapid growth in home renovations and modifications to suit age limitations.

90% of people aged over 60 also will stay in their own country (Australia)

Of the rest they will move to country or seaside areas and currently only 5% into retirement lifestyle villages and then after age 75.

Over half of the over-55 age group will still work in some capacity with 60 per cent still servicing a mortgage or other debt and even more without enough superannuation to retire.

Many retirees will remain in the big family home to accommodate adult children returning to live with them while they return to study or recover from broken relationships.

Independent and assisted living units are viable inside malls with lift access and the security of a protected mall that includes food outlets and medical centres. This is a worldwide trend for over-70s to meet at malls and use the temperate interiors as an exercise and socialising arena. Good grief I cannot think of anything I would less want to do!

What a hotch potch of contrary indicators. I guess it illustrates the diversity of the 50-plus age group. Dick Stroud

Best places to retire

Following the previous item about the most age-friendly cities. This is what the 50-plus is being told are the best places to retire US News and International Living.

I have my doubts about this and the previous type of analysis. I suspect the ‘winners’ are those who make the most noise in promoting their age-friendly credentials rather than necessarily delivering on the promise. However, from a marketer’s perspective this is what this audience is being told. Dick Stroud

Over-50s show goes to Spain

‘The Over 50s Show’ (described by the organisers, Dublin-based S&L Promotions) as a lifestyle event for older people, is taking place in the Costa de Sol in mid November. It seems that a similar event does well in Ireland and the company is having a punt (unintentional pun) to see how it goes in Spain - the second home of the UK's retired 50-plus. These types of shows are on the increase. They must be fulfilling a market need. Beats the hell out of me what that is. Dick Stroud

Ageing in place is set to be big business

This is a good definition of aging-in-place: “Living in one’s home safely, independently and comfortably, regardless of age, income or ability level”.

About 80% of all Americans (55 years or older) own their own homes. As this age group gets older a lot (estimated to be 80%+) want to stay-put and “age in place”. If this is true then there will be significant business in providing the services to enable this to happen.

To add some credibility to offering services in this area you can now become a Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist (CAPS). This new qualification results from work done by the Remodelors Council -- in conjunction with the NAHB Research Center, 50+ Housing Council and AARP.

If you want to see what this looks like from the consumer’s perspective you can download a brochure. Dick Stroud

Good videos boring web site

The press release reads: “Financial professionals, journalists and consumers can now access the most comprehensive source of information regarding solutions to the Baby Boomer retirement crisis”.

This ‘most comprehensive’ Web site is hosted by the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) - The Premier Association of Financial Professionals (so it says)

Well guys I cannot agree with your claims but you do have some really good stuff on the web site, especially the videos of the conference sessions. I wish all organizations would publish their conference proceedings in this way.

Surely you could have come up with a more enticing and professional looking web site. Dick Stroud

American Time Use Survey

This chart is from the US
Department of Labor. So I guess it must be right.

What the hell you do with the information I have no idea. Dick Stroud

AXA Equitable Retirement Scope

This is a document for the library. AXA has been conducting a worldwide study of attitudes to retirement for the past 3 years.

This 120 page report shows the results for the United States, with international comparisons. Lots of good stuff. Dick Stroud