Why I call us the 'Re-Generation' Generation
It’s touted as one of the first examples of lifestyle marketing - a catchy slogan in the early 1960s a few FiftyUp Club members may recall.
“You’re in the Pepsi Generation,” the soft-drink ads echoed as it sought to seduce hip youngsters away from Coke with little long-term success.
But if we need a slogan for our times, which promises more than a few bubbles, might I suggest one for those generations known as the Baby Boomers and their successors Generation X?
You, or rather we, are - like it or not - in the “Re-generation Generation.” Some will see this as a challenge involving effort. Others as an opportunity to create meaning and belonging which will also require work.
Even before we knew how to spell COVID, the re-generation had proactively begun as many sought a better way in later life to address their health, wealth and welfare.
The changes are apparent in popular culture such as books and films. In real life, just check-out resilient and active oldies on many beaches along with a range of businesses and movements of which FiftyUp is just one.
Here we focus on securing better offers for members around household bills and essentials, such as life insurance, but money is just one, though important, part of the puzzle.
I’d also opt for more control over my health, more realistic assessment of my future wealth, access to work - be that volunteer or paid - and supportive family and friends as being pretty handy too. And by the way, many experts say as much.
At FiftyUp Club we can’t give anyone all these benefits but we can help you as an online community, and as in the good old days and also hopefully in the future ones we can actually meet up, with ways of finding out about your options and sharing them widely with others.
With 380,000 members there’s many years of accumulated knowledge within the group. If you are aged 60 on average and got savvy to the world at say 25 years old (big assumptions I know) that’s more than 13 million years’ experience!
The statistics have been mostly in our favour. A booming economy, rising house prices as well as the decline in smoking, better pharmaceuticals, more health education and other factors meaning most of us live longer and better.
I wouldn’t go as far as others to say everything’s changed but the illusion of certainty, which can bring some comfort to us towards the end of a working life, has been ruptured by the virus.
Retirement plans, if they existed, might have gone out of the window. Booming superannuation returns, who knows? Travel plans on hold for how long? Meeting with grandchildren when?
We have to be prepared to embrace some uncertainty and I find that easier with a community of others than all alone.
I want the FiftyUp Club to help provide some of the leadership we need to navigate this next phase. I like to see this journey as a potential re-generation because the very word acknowledges our resilience and implies change for the better with something new.
So get on board, or stay on board, and see what we can all achieve around the many challenges/opportunities ahead. To regenerate is certainly more desirable that its opposite: to degenerate. Take your choice.
Any information general advice, it does not take into account your individual circumstances, objectives, financial situation or needs.
