Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Worrying but not unexpected




The Saga Quality of Life Index declined again this quarter, as standard of living pressures continued to hurt the 50-plus.

As I explained in the previous blog posting – inflation hurts older people more so than the young. If you add this to the other pressures on older people then you end up with a lot of reasons why their quality of life is on the decline.

Of course this doesn’t apply to all older people – my Charmed Generation – will still be feeling pretty chipper but for a lot – probably the majority – things are getting worse. This means times are getting harder for marketers. Note the way that the 65-69 is the group with the least decline. They are old enough not be affected by the recession and young enough not to have the problems of health decline etc.

However, what this index doesn’t show is how these groups are doing compared to other age groups.

Why the results of the recession are worse for the younger-old is that this is a time of maximum financial strain in their lives having costs and demands from both their kids and parents. Secondly, if they don’t amass wealth at this age they very quickly run out of time with all the implications that has for the funding of their retirement.

All in all not good news. Dick Stroud

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