I’m feeling gloomy! But it is such a lovely sunny north Queensland spring day. I’m fit, healthy, got a good job, nice house…. so what’s the problem?

Ahhhh, I’m worried about work issues, aging parents, a poverty-stricken retirement…..

Well, apparently I’m not the only 50-odd year old who feels like this. In fact we baby boomers (age 45 to 54) are apparently a pretty gloomy lot. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7978474/The-Baby-Gloomers.html

We are longing to retire or retreat to something entirely different, to have a sea-change or tree-change or something…. anything….. just as long as it is different and more relaxing than what we’ve got!

I’m very strongly thinking about retiring at 55 and just giving up on developing my career any further than its current respectable but modest level.

Anyway, things apparently start to get better once we reach late middle age, that is; beyond about 54. Man, am I looking forward to that!

Just one small problem: the next GFC, which will be vastly bigger than the last one, in combination with various other things; peak oil, population growth pressures, etc, are going to hit us in about 2012, or so a lot of people believe.

So um, who’s happy in their middle years, or happier in their older years than they used to be, or happy in their younger years and wondering how long it will last?

Well am in my mid 40's and have to say it just keeps getting better. Don't have the confusion of youth or the need to prove to everyone how good i am. I am comfortable with my life though am back trying to buy a home again after loosing much in the divorce.
Have already made that Tree change and am spoiled with good friends a great life that isn't consumer based and a sense of well being.
Yep life's great and just keeps getting better as i get older. OH! except the news that Peter Garrett was given education, now i am in fear for my kid's futures.

A new Labor policy has just been announced today.

Pink bats in every school.

Cool!

Dear Ludwig,

Well, I'm eighteen, (with twenty seven years
experience). Seriously, as my mother who's
in her eighties tells me, "Any day above
ground is a good day!"

I've got a job that I absolutely love, a
husband who's capable of loving fully, with
all of his heart, who's the most vital,
playful, joyful human being, with an energetic
life force born of a strong family upbringing.
He makes every day a new day. Our children
flourished under his nurturing. His honesty,
devotion, and unconditional love bound us
together in an inseparable state of familial
bliss that has been unshaken to this day.

Does it get any better than this?

I count my blessings every day!
(Except on the days when life sucks -
just joking). ;-)

Foxy, can I have him for a year or two? He sounds good enough to turn gay for. I'd have to get my wife's approval first though.

cont'd ...

I've got a story to share that could
be a future scenario - you never
know (although I hope not), anyway,
here goes:

On their 50th Anniversary, a wife found the
negligee she wore on her wedding night and
put it on. She went to her husband, a retired
military man, and asked,
"Honey do you remember this?"

He looked up from his newspaper and said,
"Yes dear, I do. You wore that same negligee
the night we were married."

She said, "Yes, that's right. Do you remember
what you said to me that night?"

He nodded, and said, "Yes dear, I said,
Oh baby, I'm going to suck the life out
of those boobs and shag your brains out!"

She giggled and said, "So now its 50 years later,
and I'm in the same negligee, what do you have to
say tonight?"

He looked her up and down and said,

"Mission Accomplished!"

Foxy, I want what you're having! Oh dear, I just turned into a baby gloomer!

Funny how the order the posts arrive in can change the context. Mine was supposed to be before the:

**Oh baby, I'm going to suck the life out
of those boobs and shag your brains out! ... followed by the follow-up, mission accomplished"**

lol

Ludwig, I am a baby boomer also. I agree that these years have also seen me questioning what is ahead, although I am thankful not to be back in my teens!

We boomers are expected to live longer and stronger than our parents generation, so I would think carefully about retiring at 55 if I were you! What if you live to one hundred years or beyond?

You would have to have a large super payout or massive savings in order to have an interesting life for that length of time.

The thing is, that most people in our generation will be quite well in our seventies and eighties. So if we don't have plenty to keep us occupied both physically and mentally, we may get quite bored!

That is what is worrying me.
I work in the community with the elderly people living at home.
I am planning not to have to watch my pennies as closely as they do!

Foxy and Petej,
You both have a wonderful sense of humor, don't you just love being alive.

Sorry Ludwig at that age you are not a baby boomer.
The term refers to soldiers on returning home and having kids in the post war years.
I am told the first ten not much more.
Dad did his bit 16 of us and about 9 by your birth year you did say 50.
Cheer up the little things that make life fun, almost always.

<< Pink bats in every school >>

<< Mission accomplished >>

Haaaa hahahaahhaaaaa!

I’m not gloomy any more!

Thanks Foxy and petej ( :>)

BTW petej, welcome to OLO.

<< Sorry Ludwig at that age you are not a baby boomer. >>

Interesting point Belly.

I hadn’t considered myself to be a baby boomer until quite recently. I always thought that being born in 1959 would make me well and truly too young to be part of the post-war baby boom.

Then I saw a definition – can’t remember where – that said baby boomers were borne from the end of the war in 1945 to the end of the 50s.

But Wikipedia suggests that the age bracket is 46 to 64, that is; borne from 1946 to 1964. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomer#Definition

Either way, the definition used in the article from which I drew this thread (see link in the opening post) seems wildly off-track – being those aged 45 to 54, which means it would have started ten years after the war ended!

I don't know why you whipper snipers don't grow up, & have fun, like us old farts.

I was 7 when tasted my first ice cream, 8 when I saw my first firecracker, & 10 when I got my first air rifle. That puts me at least 2 up on the kids of today, who aren't allowed firecrackers, or air rifles.

Why did you boomers not just make the place gloomy, but wimpy as well.

If only John Howard had been able to take us back to the 50s. I don't believe any of you, or the kids have had it half as good as I had it, & still have it, as I can at least remember the fun.

Borne? BORNE? Did I really write that….... twice??

'Born', that should have been.

Rrrrrgh!

http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0094040#m_en_gb0094040

I’m feeling gloomy again! ( :>(

<< I don't know why you whipper snipers don't grow up, & have fun, like us old farts. >>

Whipper SNIPERS ?? !! ??

<< Why did you boomers not just make the place gloomy, but wimpy as well >>.

WIMPY ?? !! ??

Haaaaaaa haaa hahahahaha.

It is great that you are having so much fun ya old fart, Hasbeen.

This thread is just getting better and better !

Hey.... I’m not feeling gloomy any more!

I just gotta say that I much prefer being fifty to twenty-five. I like my attitude much more - I'm more confident and not so easily swayed into treading societies well worn path. I have a bit more gumption to do things differently if it so pleases me.
I have a nine year-old son and a twenty eight year-old daughter so am enjoying things up and down the spectrum.
My advice is to look outside the square..fill your head with interesting things, read of all the lives you never had..and don't take the media too seriously.

If your definisiton is accurate, Ludwig,I'm a baby-boomer too, but I sure don't feel like an old fart.

At 47, I've risen to the top of two very different fields and given both away. I know I don't like the corporate life and the pressure to perform that is part of being successful in a corporate environment. That had a lot to do with the break down of my marriage, I suspect.

I'd have to say that I feel pretty good about myself and my life. Despite the best efforts of the "system" to grind me down I have a tolerably successful business that allows me quite a bit of flexibility and pays the bills. I don't have to go anything I choose not to and I have the personal authority to say "I don't want your business" for no reason other than your looks if I choose.

I have 2 fantastic kids, with whom I get to spend lots of good times and who seem to enjoy my company. I have a bunch of great mates who've stuck by through thick and thin.

I have a great boat that lets me go fishing whenever they're on and I don't have any debts except the one invented by the CSA.

I don't have any women hanging on to my coattails, spending my money, interfering with my pleasures and wasting my times with things that don't interest me.

The only fly in the ointment is a neurotic ex-wife and a corrupt Government organisation determined to pander to her neurosis. Their time will come soon and then it's plain sailing for me and mine.

I occasionally think on the fact that I've got about 25 years left to enjoy and that makes me all the more determined to enjoy them. I spent far too much of my first 47 trying to please others.

Nil carborundum illegitimatum!! (as they say in the classics...)

By 1964 Ludwig my family had all come 16 ,well dad may have got around a bit but that was our mob,8 lived to grow.
Still sure 59 was not baby boom year but maybe it was for slow starters.
Life is just great believe me you become different people as you get down the track.
Ten years ago my weekends found me high in the mountains or beside a creek, maybe on the beach.
Now? health not great but not dead yet I put in long days at work and answer to no one on week ends would not be dead for quids.
15 months from giving work away, that is past retirement, and back to the bush and beach, garden too.
OLO as well

Don't be gloomy Ludwig.

Remember when you were young. Isn't it much better being older and not having any of those ridiculous hangups and inadequacies of youth. We continue to learn new things even as we get older.

Many baby gloomers are worried about retirement. We did not have the superannuation entitlements of the later generations until well into working life (well many of us didn't) and if you took time out to raise kids there goes another ten years. It is amazing how much you can do with less if you have to and still have fun. Not everything worth doing costs money.
:)

I agree with Pelican....."We did not have the superannuation entitlements of the later generations until well into working life (well many of us didn't)"

I get so sick and tired of younger people who speak without knowing/thinking when they say such things as 'Baby-boomers only have themselves to blame for a poor retirement outcome because they failed to save for their future, prefering to rely on the pension instead.'

Many so called baby-boomers grew up in an Australia that had a large manufacturing base consisting mostly of low paying jobs that provided little hope of saving anything for the future. There wasn't a bank on every corner like today, so bank manager positions were scarce. Same with solicitors and other well paying positions. Most of us grew up expecting to move from school into a low paying job and lucky to have it. The next 6 years was spent learning to live on just $15-$20 a week. Then came marriage, children and the great Aussie dream of owning your own piece of Eden, followed by divorce and a struggle to survive before the days of child support where each day was spent just trying to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and clothes on our backs.

The next 16 years were spent in a factory enduring freezing cold winters with no heating to speak of and stinking hot summers near an iron wall with no cooling except an open door where life threatening dust constantly blew in, so ten years ago and with failing health, I went back to school and re-educated myself and today I work in a professional area with much better job satisfaction. The kids grew up ok too and now I have a lovely batch of beautiful grand children to carry the family flag into a vastly unknown future of rapidly diminishing resources.

With just three and a half years before I turn 60, I'm contemplating retirement and am saving hard to get enough money together to live out the rest of my life on as little as $200 a week. Am I happy? Grumpy? Content? Restless? Satisfied? You bet! All of the latter and sometimes in spades, but I'm also aware that all in all, I've had a charmed life simply because I'm still here. Many of my old factory friends are no longer "above ground" as Foxy mentioned.

So, as I march towards retirement and eventually the grave, I look back on my life and see it sometimes wasted, sometimes rewarded, but overall, productive. I was, am and always will be simply a grain of sand on a very large beach and a tiny grain of sand may not ever be recognised for anything of significance, yet that grain of sand knows that it did serve a purpose after all.....it helped support all the other grains of sand that makes up the beach that is a part of a very beautiful world!

<< Remember when you were young >>

Only vaguely, Pelican! ( :<|

<< Isn't it much better being older and not having any of those ridiculous hangups and inadequacies of youth. >>

Hmmmm, let me think about it...

Well, it certainly is better to have got over some really foul hangups I had in my yooth! But to be a whole lot older – not so sure ‘bout that!

Anyway, it is late in the evening and time for a little relaxxxing music from my yoooth bfor beddybyes…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTvzzgk_jEY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeRa3RtBiIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLnDuzgkjo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYscpjfxCaU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1iR2Wi3u5o

Aime, when I was 17, about a million years ago, my wage was $32 a fortnight. And the job was considered a really good job. Out of that came $10 board, which left $22 a fortnight to live on.

Ludwig ,unless we fix the banking system then the depression will not go away.The ability of private banks to create new money from nothing must be removed and given to Govt that represents the people.

We cannot fix a debt problem by creating more of it. see http://secretof oz.com/ and down load this really really entertaining and revealing documentary.Just released and has already won 2 awards.

Thanks for introducing me to the secretofoz site, Arjay. It's a cracker.

The kicker is that it has nothing to do with Oz, as in Australia, but is a reference to that wacky - and fictitious - technicolour land occupied by crazy little people and wicked witches.

Classic.

The "theories" it presents are laughable.

So much so, that I'm a little suspicious the whole thing might be a spoof, and someone will suddenly jump out and say "look, he took it seriously, ha ha ha..."

I'll take the risk, though...

"Imagine in your own world. What if tomorrow you were told that all your mortgage debt and credit card debt was cancelled...<<

This, for those who would find it too embarrassing to visit the site, is the solution offered, that will fix "all world poverty, hunger, disease and misery."

I kid you not.

The most delightfully escapist part, though, is the analysis of what happens next.

"But what about the banks? They are already failing? Let them fail. Government can issue it’s own money and credit. We don’t need their hyper-expensive compounding interest system. Banks or banking won’t go away. Everyone will still need loans and checking accounts. Some one will step in and provide those services. You’ll still go down to your corner bank to deposit your check. Your bank will still be there."

Errr... Arjay? Are you there?

Could you explain to me why the author believes the banks "won't go away"?

The government has just wiped out their asset base.

Incidentally, this would also cause any savings (liabilities, remember) to disappear at the same time. Some folk might get a tad upset about that, don't you think?

As for anyone stepping in to "provide those services" - who would be so stupid? If the only source of money is the government (and we really, really trust those guys, don't we?), where does the concept of banking fit in?

I've said it before, Arjay, and I'll say it again.

Don't just regurgitate this stuff - read it, think about it, question it.

Above all, try to understand it.

Dear Aime,

I've just come back to this thread and
read what you posted.

Gosh, you certainly managed to put a lump
in my throat - brought back memories of
how tough my parents had it - and yet
they, like so many others, made the most
of what they had and never complained.
I remember that dad was as honest as the day
is long, and he had a strong work ethic.
He also never bought anything unless
he could afford it. Credit was out of the question.

Thanks for reminding us all of what really is
important. Family life, good friends, and above
all, love and respect. A strong family upbringing
matters.

Pericles Are you that afraid that you have now assumed the position of my shadow>Every time I write something you are there as a detractor.If it was all BS that I write, your constant shadow angst would be totally unnecessary.I seem to have you really worried.

Peter Schiff,Ron Paul's running companion for the Presidency plays a role.We are going to really promote this one since it is about time this criminal system came to an end.

That's genuinely funny, Arjay.

>>Pericles Are you that afraid that you have now assumed the position of my shadow<<

Where on earth in your posts is there anything that anyone could possibly be afraid of?

>>Every time I write something you are there as a detractor<<

"Detractor" is so harsh. I prefer to think of myself as your online life coach.

It may seem to you that I am a detractor, but in fact I'm more of an educator.

For example, did you think through the "wipe out all debt" remedy on the secretofoz site, as I recommended? That's the educating part of me, you see, helping you understand that life is more than just neat-o slogans.

I know that you try hard not to listen, but who knows, one day...

Hey, I'm such a dreamer.

>>If it was all BS that I write, your constant shadow angst would be totally unnecessary.I seem to have you really worried.<<

But it isn't the "BS" - as you so aptly put it - that you write that causes angst, Arjay. It's the thought of how it might be slowly rotting your brain. I wouldn't wish that on any human being, so yes, I do worry about you.

>>Peter Schiff,Ron Paul's running companion for the Presidency plays a role.We are going to really promote this one since it is about time this criminal system came to an end.<<

The best of luck with that. I doubt that his ideas on the economy will take him very far. But in a country where one in five think President Obama is a Muslim, anything is possible.

Have a great day.

So Pericles you think that it is OK for the US Fed to create another $ trillion in their computers ,loan to the US tax payer as stimulus and call that ethical ecomonics.

I think that you brain has undergone serious degeneration.I told you 12 mths ago that simulus wouldn't work.You cannot solve debt problem by creating more of it.

Arjay, what do you mean when you say the USA government "creates" money?

You also say private banks "create money from nothing".

Could you please fully expand on both those statements please.