America’s 60-year-olds are staring at financial peril
Shauna Sharpes doesn’t travel and grows much of her own food at her home in western Washington state. The payroll manager for a local Native American tribal authority has meager savings and expects she will have to keep working for at least the next decade. Part of her challenge: She turned 60 in January, putting her at the tail end of a baby boom generation that is hurtling toward retirement age in uncertainty.
Born in a midcentury, postwar America brimming with promise, many of the youngest boomers are still sporting financial bruises from the 2007-09 recession and the nation’s steady shift away from guaranteed pensions. “The most important things for me right now are a place to live indoors, water and food," said Sharpes, who has about $3,000 in her retirement accounts. “And thinking about how I’m going to provide that for myself from now until I drop dead." By the end of this year, the youngest baby boomers will all turn 60.
The birth dates of those in this generation—around 70 million strong, or one in five Americans—cover a 19-year span stretching from the aftermath of World War II to 1964, the year the Beatles made their debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Older Americans—including young boomers with retirement accounts powered by a booming stock market—remain a major force in the economy. Those 55 and up control nearly 70% of U.S.
household wealth, Federal Reserve data show. But that age group also includes older adults with little if any retirement funds socked away, or only Social Security to lean on, who are facing golden years laden with risk. For millions of younger boomers, who could live at least two more decades, a lost job or expensive medical problem could upend their stability while ramping up pressure on
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