A baby boomers oddyssey
Little Charlie was born in 1946.
He can’t really remember the war, but grew up with many stories of how the Nazis became synonymous with all evil.
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He has 5 siblings
Charlie’s early years as a baby were quite difficult for his Mum and Dad as there were still rations and good food was hard to come by.
He remembers wishing he had more dinner on his plate, and the cartoon characters in the comics he saw always won in the end with a ‘big slap up dinner!’
Charlie barely remembers nursery except that there were a lot of kids who competed for the slide.
He had many friends at school, and there were 30 in his class.
Charlie’s teen years were to be the best because there was so much for his generation to do, so many cinemas, coffee shops, and he had so many friends. Television was just coming in and the Hit parade started playing rock and roll. He bought his first suit around now. He has a choice of apprenticeships he can go choose when he leaves school, and there are many jobs available.
When he was twenty the Birth control pill was being hailed as a social-economic breakthrough, little did he know what an impact this would have on his world, as Charlie was too busy listening to the Beatles and the Rolling stones, and going to one of hundreds of pubs and dance halls in his area, that were always packed with people his age. He has finished his apprenticeship and his job leaves him with a decent spendable income.
Over in the states in San Francisco his peers were starting a movement inspired by peace and love, the kids in their twenties’, inspired by the pain of the aftermath of war that their parents had endured. This particular movement was soon to hit UK shores.
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He would have met a couple of girls and finally got engaged when he was around 23 his wife to be would be around twenty years old, they eventually would have 3 children. Thanks to birth control this was more of a decision than divine intervention.
The nineteen seventies saw Charlie working hard to support his children, and enjoying holidays mostly in UK. He starts to see a decline in the number of cinemas and dance halls:
“Less people to go out now I suppose, they are all married like me” He thinks to himself, “Everyone has a television and a land line phone in the house now’”
His children mostly play outside, and climb trees and ride bicycles and go swimming in local pools at least once a week Charlie’s life is devoted to his wife and children.
America is still at war with Vietnam. He hears some bad news coming out of Cambodia also.
In 1986 Charlie reaches his 40th birthday, his parents still talk of the World war. He he has a good car that always starts in the morning; He has a mortgage and owns his own property, something his father thinks little of. Charlie’s house is a palace compared to where he grew up.
He enjoys food and is putting on a little weight and he has a lot of shoes and a couple of watches he ponders on how he had one pair of shoes when he was at school and how he was twenty before he could buy a wristwatch. His children have finished education and are now getting jobs, not long till he has his house to himself. The pop bands on the television are wearing makeup now UGH!
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Charlie is 50 in 1996 He has lost both his parents and is now an orphan of sorts. He has started to see redundancies at work, ‘people not needed anymore’ computers doing the jobs now, seems the jobs for life the politicians promised was a marketing scam. He has seen the rise of ‘fast food’. MacDonald’s has finally arrived, and he notices the kids are getting fatter at school.
“Seems to be less kids falling out if trees and off bikes these days, people seem less friendlier and are quite covetous now”, he thinks to himself. He notices many one child families, when he was at school he felt sorry for kids with no brothers or sisters. He has watched his children get married and he is looking forward to some additions to the family.
He has bought his first mobile phone and he wonders whether or not this is a good thing, time will tell. He is now a manager at work, and has quite a lot of responsibility. Things are a lot more expensive now and he earns more, yet has less spendable income than when he was younger. He worries not about his pension as he trusts the Government, and it has all been taken care of through the ‘pay as you earn’ system that deducts money from his salary each month to put into a pension.
On his 60th Birthday Charlie looks back and wonders if he achieved enough in his life, his house is paid for, and he adores his grandchildren, although he wonders if he can ever stop them playing games on the television and get them outside for a game if football in the park.
His oldest son is always talking of entrepreneurship and starting his own business as jobs are scarce for him.
“Why is he so greedy”, He thinks, Charlie’s life was good, ok he sacrificed a lot of dreams but it was for the good of his family wasn’t it? Why can’t his son be happy with a job? Why did he get divorced?
In 2011 Charlie retires along with around 1/3 of the world’s population who survived to this age. Around 36% of Charlie’s generation did not survive for one reason or another, 58% of his generation cannot survive purely on the pension alone, and continue to work well beyond pension age.
He knows one guy at school ‘the one with the glasses’ who started a business and now is in magazines and has a helicopter, ‘but the rest of us we get by, we wish we had more but we are ok aren’t we?’
He thinks to himself:
“It does not matter how slim and big the TV gets, there are too many channels to watch, and they are all crammed with infernal adverts!
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Thank God there were enough of us to afford our pensions, I wonder how my children, who were born in the sixties, will fare when they retire, probably won’t have as much money as I do now. Now I am beginning to understand why my son wants his own business now.”
Between now and 2022 two billion people will retire bringing the largest ever population movement ‘ The baby boomers’ born 1946-1966 to the end of their working lives and on to a pension, and this is a concept you must take into consideration of every good business and financial decision you will ever make for yourself and your family.
In the 50’s baby products was the ‘to be in’ industry.
In the 1960’s Music and entretainment thrived.
In the 1970’s if you were a Mortgage broker life was really good.
In the 1980’s Shoes, cars and watch makers found their target market.
In the 1990’s Financial companies knew who to sell to…
If you understand Market trends you have a basic concept of where your target market is.
So what are you thinking? what does the average 60-70 year old want now?
To take full advantage of this mega trend contact me today for FREE! Trainingwith 5 crucial points to consider any successful business.
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