Despite their connection to the freewheeling years of the ’60s and ’70s, baby boomers closely identify with traditional values, respectfulness and work ethic, said Van Wyk. Their generation is settling into retirement, and despite worries about a retirement crisis, most of the respondents in the American Funds studies express contentment in retirement—30 percent of retired baby boomers said retirement was going as well as they had expected, with another 60 percent saying it was going better than they had hoped.
Yet baby boomers are also worried about issues like health care and taxes, said Van Wyk, and as the generation continues to leave the workforce, many find that retirement doesn’t come as expected.
“It doesn’t always come on time for boomers; only a quarter of them have it come at the time they thought it would,” he said. Van Wyk also said that extra time should be taken addressing boomers’ fears about health care in retirement, and that volatility will challenge the contentment of many members of this generation.
“Use their experience,” he said. “They’ve been there and seen the ups and downs.”