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Reverse Mortgage Client Demographic
Locating Potential Reverse Mortgage Prospects
Sixty is the new sixty: a watershed birthday for the Baby Boom generation, who are reaching this milestone at the rate of one every ten seconds. But this is not your grandfather’s sixty, or even your father’s sixty. People who reach 60 today can expect to live at least another quarter century — ideally in good health, with vision and purpose more sharply focused than at any other time in the life cycle, due to an awareness of one’s mortality.
Management expert Daniel Pink proclaims, “When the cold front of demographics meets the warm front of unrealized dreams, the result will be a thunderstorm of purpose the likes of which the world has never seen.”
Are you poised to connect with these reverse mortgage prospects, who are redefining what it means to grow older in the third millennium?
The first step is locating them. While a sixty-something Boomer might pop into the local senior center for a game of ping-pong, she’s more likely to do so as a change of pace from her demanding marketing consulting business than simply to socialize. Thus, you’d be more likely to target this potential reverse mortgage market by broadening your scope.
Seniors And Retirement
Where do the newly minted seniors, who are creating a new life stage known as the Third Age, spend time?
Community service. Think causes: the environment, education, health care, economic change. Civic, cultural, and service organizations are attracting mature adults seeking both paid and non-paid work. These encore careers take place “at the confluence of money, meaning, and social impact,” says Marc Freedman, author of The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife.
School. Whether they’re training for an entirely different post-midlife career, enhancing existing skills, or studying something they’ve always wanted to learn, lifelong learning is hot, as record numbers of seniors return to school in both traditional settings and online.
Health clubs. Even if they don’t aspire to swim the Florida straits or play college football in their 60s (see Pressing the Reset Button/Part 1), Third Stage adults are focused on staying healthy and fit.
Self-development classes. A yoga or meditation class, journal writing or drum circle, can provide much-needed emotional and spiritual support within a like-minded community.
Once you determine a few groups in your area that serve active older adults, start to network in these environments. Attend gatherings; you may even wish to join a group that appeals to you. Volunteer to give a talk on a topic such as “ways to fund your Third Age vision” — which would include reverse mortgage.
As you begin to build relationships with your potential market in their milieu, you’ll be the obvious choice for group members to consult when they’re considering alternative sources of income for financing future plans.
In Part 3, we’ll explore how Reverse Mortgage professionals can share their knowledge with the new demographic.
2 Comments
While many men in my parents generation got their education through the GI bill, many in my generation got their education to avoid Nam and because families could afford it. Instead of having a goal of teaching, nursing, or home making, women in my generation in overwhelming numbers started going to school to become CPAs, engineers, chemists, physicists, attorneys, college presidents, and on and on. It is not my mother’s generation.
Today the differences at 60 are overwhelming for both men and women for both better and worse. Many Boomers have no examples of what is expected of them at 80; their immediate older relatives have all passed away. They have little idea about how one is supposed to age because they have no models.
We are a very odd generation who will soon be overwhelming Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs. We will be challenging employment longevity standards and norms. As a generation we will not accept retirement gracefully. Somehow we will have to come to terms with it.
Does anyone really believe that Secretary Clinton at 64 will not try to be the Democrat presidential nominee for 2016? Don’t tell the Secretary she must retire at 65 unless you are prepared to be humiliated by laughter or be orally cut down to size. Even now there is talk about Mrs. Obama following in the footsteps of the Secretary once the President is out of office.
Recently a classmate from high school and college and I linked up. We have not communicated in over 4 decades. It turns out she revolutionized the way neurology is taught in medical school at a major university east of the Mississippi. Where their medical students scored in the bottom of the bell shaped curve on general neurology on the medical exam two decades ago, by forcing her out of research and into the medical classroom, they are now at the opposite end of the curve. She is now invited to meet with medical school educators internationally to share her methods. She wrote me the other day telling me she will retire in 2013. I laughed. That woman will never retire; she loves what she does and watching medical students grow under her teaching. Who could give that up easily?
Amara, your article strikes home.
Thank you, James. Your comment could itself serve as s very nice piece on what the Third Age looks like; perhaps you ought to submit it to an industry publication – referencing Reverse Fortunes, of course 🙂
Yes, we are absolutely revolutionizing aging on every front. I also encourage you to get a copy of Freedman’s book, The Big Shift. It’s extremely well written and useful.
Blessings ~
Amara