There was a time when the generation everyone talked about was the Baby Boomers. There were so many of them, and they had so many advantages, and they were going to take over the world.

Those Baby Boomers are now in retirement or very near retirement, and the world has changed its focus to concentrating on Millennials, those people who were born between 1980 and 1995 and who are now in their late 20s to mid-30s and have dominated the airwaves and print pages because they don’t use mayonnaise and they don’t communicate the way others would like.

But in between the Boomers and Millennials was a generation, born between 1965 and 1980. They were eventually identified as Generation X, a designation that indicates no one knew what to make of them.

And now that generation of investors is in their 40s and early to mid-50s and preparing for retirement. They are also a generation that seems to have been lost in the transition from Boomers to Millennials.

According to Spectrem’s new whitepaper Generation X: The Pressure is On, advisors need to focus on Generation X investors because:

·         They currently have the lowest percentage of total assets considered as investable assets, just 54 percent compared to 67 percent among Baby Boomers and even 58 percent among Millennials. Generation X investors are not only still paying for college educations, they are considering their own future health situation and the long-term care needs of their aging parents. As a result, Generation X investors are very protective and attentive to how their investable assets are being invested. 

·         Asked to rate on a 100-point scale how worried they are about depleting their retirement funds eventually, Generation X investors had the highest rating among all generations at 48.77. Many Generation X investors, including those with a net worth over $1 million, worry about being able to ever retire.

·         Generation X investors are more likely than others to want information from their advisor about planning for retirement, interest rate changes and current economic events and their impact of personal wealth. Because Generation X investors are concerned about three generations at a time (their parents, their own needs, and their children) they are attuned to many different factors impacting their wealth.  

Clients who are between the Boomer and Millennial generations may need a lengthy meeting with their advisor to determine just how their portfolio is aimed toward the client needs for their children, their parents and themselves.

 

 

©2019 Spectrem Group

Keywords: geneation x, investors, advisors, Spectrem, investable, assets