This might be the view from Valcluse but the 65+ cohort spend LESS than any other age group below them. Retirees in general have a house and car and that's about it. They are extraordinarily frugal with their spends and have limited liquidity.

True, travel and some luxury goods are in demand for cashed up Boomers with more than $1.5 in savings and investments.

The reality is that many of the post war generation will scrape by and now we have a Government who is considering raising the pension age to 70. The Boomers own 40 percent of the nations houses and apartments. I wouldn't push that line too much as the grandkids currently have bugger all chance of owning a house.

It's true that peer to peer selling as you see in Bunnings, where older workers serve older customers, is a very good idea. But I wouldn't make too much of the so called piles of cash the Boomers have stored away.

Just because you are just scraping by, Malcolm (Paddy) King, you shouldn't assume everyone else is the same.

Get used to it - you're the one who is different.

Stay with me DavidL. Don't go all wobbly on me. I'm only in my early 50s plus have been very lucky with work and investments. I worked in DEEWR Labour Strategy in this area and the article is empirically wrong.

It's true that APIA and Harvey World Travel and others are trying to garner the rich Boomer but by far the majority of first cohort Boomers (1945-54) own one asset: their home. The GFC wiped out billions of super savings, that's why many older workers will have to keep on working. It's not a case of surfeit, it's a case of necessity.

Stories like this send a message to Abbott that it's 'easy living' for the Boomers - why not raise the pension eligibility age?

<<While the over 65s constitute 14% of the population (and the fastest growing demographic) they feature in only 4.7% of advertisements and even here are targeted for only a limited range of products.>>

Somebody must have got the message that older people would not put up with being advertised at - Thank God for that!

Do you want to have good business relations and sell your goods to older people? Then here is a tip:

!! Stop moving your stores around, opening and closing every week in a different location and also stop shuffling the goods within your stores. !!

Older people need not have to follow the latest and greatest - older people look for stability, they want the assurance that if they need something they can always visit the same store they have been in last year and then find what they need in the same area within that store.

If it's too hard to walk around looking for what one needs, then one may just as well find it online, and if it can be found more easily overseas, then so be it, regardless of price. In other words, save older people both their feet and their eyes, so online too make it as simple and direct as possible to find what people need.

- Yes, older people know what they need. If you attempt to tell them that you know better, then rightly so they will see it as insult and won't come!

Some years ago, I did what most retailers/service providers do today, judge a book by its cover.
Only to be told by a sharp eyed partner, the old bloke in the shabby singlet, paint flecked shorts and well worn thongs, was the richest bloke in our part of the country.
It was a mistake I never repeated!
Rhrosty.

Most of what I buy is for me. I had to budget all my life but now what I have left is mine, for me.
Retail store assistants don't even see me when I enter their stores.
When I purchase on line, no one makes the judgement that I am too old, too poor, etc.
I am treated well and receive excellent service.
Sadly, most of this service comes from outside Australia.

Yuyutsu have you been sneaking around listening in to my conversations?

Having been upset when yet another favorite product was replaced in my local supermarket, by some in house brand, I did a little math, then attacked the manager, verbally of course.

First I pointed out that I had spent in excess of $178,000 in the store, in a little over 20 years. He did not believe me, until I showed him the math. I'm not sure he could understand it. Kids don't have much math today.

I wanted to know the name of that horrid little person who immediately moved everything in the store the moment I left, so I couldn't find things next time. I demanded to know when this horrid person would be sacked.

I pointed out I am only interested in the best. I don't eat that much, so I may as well eat quality. Clapped out old Brahman cow belongs in the dogs meat section, not in the stake display. He could not tell me where the grain feed porterhouse & fillet steak they used to stock had gone unfortunately.

When I pointed out that some fool had moved the trolley return to a spot much further from the disabled parking he looked guilty. I wondered if he liked abandoned trolleys around these parking bays.

Finally I pointed out that if I have to go somewhere else for my meat, porridge, fruit & biscuits, there will be no reason to come back to his shop. With 6 new supermarkets built recently as close as his, he was ensuring I changed my patronage.

I tried to explain that a larger markup on low quality imported company brand products only became higher profit if someone bought them. They are a liability if they drive previously loyal, [or lazy] customers away. I think he got the point, but I'm not really sure.

You could go further.
Even by being a Male you are made to feel stupid
by those Advertisements featuring the woman making out
that the man is an idiot.
To be an old male is even worse, it is not only shop
assistants who rush passed you to serve the younger
customers, it is the customers who push past you at the serving counters.

Raise the Dust , Hasbeen and rhosty... I have to totally agree with you especially about the un-neccary shifting of products.I now shop IGA and wish that Aldi would open a store near me.

I buy much of my 'one off' Items online nowadays... bugger dealing with high margain Retailers and their Staff who appear to have little product knowledge.

Living in rural Tasmania means that I buy almost all my Wine and other Goodies online , the transport man has worn a path to my place. I buy quality but NOT at stupid prices.

My partner and I definately spend more disposable income than a similar couple in , say , their 30s. Maybe they would spend more on their Mobiles, but , who wants to be a servant to that technogoly 24/7 ?

The fact that retailers do not target me makes me very happy !

Malcolm

'But I wouldn't make too much of the so called piles of cash the Boomers have stored away.'

I agree. And I am skeptical about the claim that the median net worth of 50-70 year olds is $900,00. If this is true, then I suspect most of that 'net' worth is tied up in the value of the family home, which is in turn tied to a housing market that is grossly overinflated by world standards. Even when boomers downsize, they still have to spend at least half that net worth on an apartment or smaller house.

Added to that, a 2012 report from the University of Adelaide found that people over 50 give away a total of $50 billion per year to other family members, mostly their adult children.

This has little-to-nothing to do with parental indulgence. In an era of, among other things, HECS debts, almost mandatory tertiary education to enter the jobs market, unpaid graduate internships, a casualised labour market, user-pays health and education and an unaffordable first-home buyers market, boomers are having to assume a large whack of the financial responsibility for their adult children's futures - a responsibility the government has been gradually shirking over the last thirty years.

Regarding the author's lament that over 50s are not getting wooed by the Mad Men of Big-Advertising and Big Retail, I have to agree with most of the other commenters here. (I almost never agree with these guys, so this is something of a celebration!) I have enough to fork out in funding my future retirement while having to spend thousands every year on my university student sons. The last thing I need is to be bombarded by the retail world to part with my well-earned money for things I do not need.

Dear Killarney,

For generations most people didn't need to see the inside of a bank. Instead, parents helped their children build their new home when they married, from money they saved over many years as well as what they received in trust from previous generations. It is fitting and proper for families to work for their future generations.

As per specific complaints:

HECS debts - nobody should be forced to attend university: if one chooses to, then pay upfront and there'll be no debt.

Almost mandatory tertiary education to enter the jobs market - due to government regulations.

Unpaid graduate internships - receiving free education without paying the teacher.

A casualised labour market - when you're not forced to work 9-5 every day, but can choose your own convenient times and employer(s).

User-pays health and education - Oh I wish I was allowed to opt out of Medicare: I'm paying my own health bills anyway because I don't use conventional/Western medicine. If you fail to pay for your own education, then someone else must. Why should they?

An unaffordable first-home buyers market - all due to government regulations on what and where you can build. If only you could build your own shack first with your own hands, then improve it later when you can afford!

"The financial responsibility for their adult children's futures - a responsibility the government has been gradually shirking over the last thirty years." - How long before those last thirty years lasted this rule of the cuckoo bird, laying its eggs in other birds' nests and expecting them to feed the fledglings of others?

Oh Killarney I would have loved to have a HECS debt.

I was one of the few lucky ones in my day. I was successful enough to get a General Motors cadetship. This paid for the first 2 years of my B Sc. Without that, like most, I would only have got into Uni on a teachers scholarship, & even they were limited.

Strangely they declined to pay for the rest when I decided I was not the General Motors type.

I had to pay up front, just like everyone else, some years later, after I had earned enough money, to finish my degree.

HECS would have been such a luxury.