“The Silents were, in every way, a mirror of the G. I. generation that came before
them,” said Ken Gronbach, a demographer and author of the Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm. “They were conservative, hard-working, they lived well below their means. The Silents are by no means ostentatious or big spenders like the boomers. They did not run up trillion dollars in credit card debt. It just wasn’t their style.”
This quiet, no frills commitment to hard work earned this generation its monicker. A 1951 story in Time magazine described them as “working fairly hard and saying almost nothing.” The same article suggested the youth of that day wanted nothing more than “a good, secure job.”
They appear to have sustained this interest in security right into retirement, showing far more prudence than the free-spending generation that followed. A recent survey by Desjardins Financial Security showed 42% of Canadians over 40 felt they would have to delay retirement because of the financial crisis, with the average person projecting a deferral of 5.9 years. But there is also evidence to suggest the average boomer was adequately prepared for his or her golden years even before the financial meltdown. A study released by the McKinsey Global Institute in June that two-thirds of “early boomer” households — those between the ages of 54 and 63 –had not accumulated enough savings to maintain their lifestyles in retirement.
In contrast, the silent generation saved more and accumulated less debt. The McKinsey study found baby boomers had 1.5 times the amount of debt of their predecessors. The Silents also socked away twice as much in savings during their prime earning years. “My husband first started contributing to an RRSP when they first introduced them in the early, early days,” said a 70-year-old retired nurse from British Columbia, who did not want her name used. “I went back to work in the early eighties and I was contributing as well. I think that was such an important thing, but the young today have a lot of other priorities.”
The retirement that many now face is drastically different from the “suburban idyll” that Time magazine 50 years ago said they envisioned. The downturn in the stock market has hurt them the same as other investors, but a slew of factors compound the silent generation’s problems. Many senior citizens had invested heavily in income trusts and were blind-sided when the Conservative government in 2006 announced plans to end their tax-free status.
“These people have no recovery,” Mr. Gronbach said. “Depending on how long they live, they’re going to have an interesting 10 to 15 years.”
Mr. Kerr, the retired executive in Collingwood, said his family may not be headed for the soup kitchen, but there are sacrifices. “You’re torn between wanting to travel while you’re healthy and being prudent and cutting back on travelling,” he said. “Our friends are cutting back on eating out, holidays. Nobody is on the bread line, but compared to where we were, it is quite a drastic change.”
