The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently launched a new website specifically targeted for boomers interested in becoming entrepreneurs. 50+Entrepreneur isn’t an overwhelmingly rich site from a content standpoint, but it does include useful information on how to tap the SBA for advice and small business loans. It’s also interesting that SBA is recognizing the enormous need for education and assistance as boomers transition into second careers. Here’s what the agency had to say about it in a press release:
“The SBA is working hard to increase opportunities for small businesses of the baby boomer generation at every stage of their business development through better technology tools and effective services through the agency’s district offices and resource partners,” SBA Acting Administrator Sandy K. Baruah said. “We believe 50-plus entrepreneurs will drive significant new businessgrowth in the coming years.”
Components of the new Web site include a self-assessment feature to help the aspiring entrepreneur determine his or her business readiness, information on borrowing and credit, and inspirational success stories from baby boomer entrepreneurs. The Web site will help users evaluate the reasons for business ownership after age 50, the risks involved, and how to devise a plan of action at every phase of business development.
This is the first new offering under the structure of the re-launched Office of Entrepreneurship Education (OEE). OEE combines SBA’s online education programs, business and community initiatives, and outreach to underserved markets under a single umbrella.
If you’d like to learn more about the 50+ market from a global perspective, you can tune into live streaming webcasts of The Silver Market Phenomenon symposium sessions live from Toyko this week. The symposium examines the growing 55-plus population globally, and considers why the market is still underdeveloped from a product a service standpoint. I contributed an article to the book looking at the impact of aging audiences on mass media in the U.S., chiefly newspapers. I’ll be discussing the article as part of a panel discussion the first morning of the symposium.
If you’re in the U.S. this is something of a night owl event due to the time zone changes. The conference takes place on Friday and Saturday, and gets underway Friday morning at 9:15AM Tokyo time. That’s 8:15pm Eastern time on Thursday in the U.S., so you can take it from there! The conference organizers advise that the sessions may also be archived for viewing later, so I’ll post that whenever the taped video becomes available.
If you’ve been distracted lately by lipstick, bridges to nowhere and the ongoing financial meltdown on Wall Street, you might have missed one of this election season’s most significant events. On the seventh anniversary of 9/11, Barack Obama and John McCain participated in a presidential forum on national service. The forum was part of a Service Nation summit convened in New York City to commemorate the day of national tragedy. It was a solemn, thoughtful reflection on how America has changed since 9/11.
The forum focused on ways that Americans can serve their communities and their country at a time of critical need, and the candidates had a chance to air their ideas on promoting civic engagement.
Much of the conversation revolved around national service by young people. But civic engagement and service to the community also is a very hot topic among older Americans, especially baby boomers.
The older boomers now closing in on 60 came of age during the social and political upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s. Since then, they’ve been hard at work raising families, building careers and sending kids to college; now, many anticipate using newfound free time to get back involved. Mobilizing even a portion of the boomer generation could yield enormous results, simply because the group is so large. The boomer generation is the largest in American history, accounting for roughly 78 million Americans. Whenever this group moves in a particular direction, the impact is huge.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that hardship withdrawals from 401(k) accounts are rising and that investors are showing other signs of pulling back from the market amidst the current turmoil. According to WSJ, the signs include cutbacks in contributions to retirement accounts, shifts away from stocks toward fixed income vehicles and outright hardship withdrawals–despite the 10 percent penalties these withdrawals incur.
There’s no solid data available yet on withdrawals over the past week. But David Wray, president of the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America, tells me that while hardship withdrawals are up year-to-date, the overall numbers remain below 2 percent of all investors–an “extremely low” number. “There’s no evidence of people making significant reductions in their contributions to plans,” Wray says.
“People are concerned but the typical experience we’ve seen with 401k accounts is that people stay the course. We’ve been through this before in 2000 to 2002, which was considerably worse due to 9/11 and other financial troubles. At that time the 401(k) system remained stable. It’s an island of stability in a sea of uncertainty.”
According to Fidelity Investments–which has one of the industry’s largest databases of investor statistics–the percentage of workers with a balance in their workplace savings plan taking a hardship withdrawal for an immediate or severe financial need was up slightly to 0.60 percent in the three months ended June 30, 2008, as compared to 0.56 percent in the same period in 2007.
Fidelity said that the numbers for people initiating a loan from their workplace savings plan during the three months ended June 2008 was 2.8 percent, down from 3.1 percent at the end of June 2007.
With the harrowing news out of Wall Street the past couple weeks, I have no doubt stress is mounting among retirement investors. But hardship withdrawals are related more directly to dire personal household finance situations resulting from joblessness, home foreclosure and the like–not market turmoil. If the economy retreats even further as the year progresses, we’ll probably see hardship withdrawals jump further.
I outlined the reasons for avoiding hardship withdrawals if you possibly can at RetirementRevised in May.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is wading into the global challenge of aging populations in a big way. The WEF commissioned Mercer, the global benefits consulting firm, to do scenario modeling on how societies might respond to the challenges of health and pension financing for increasingly elderly global populations. The aim is to help governments, individuals, employers and the healthcare and financial service industries to think through the issues and prepare for the future, according to WEF/Mercer.
The WEF/Mercer report should provide some interesting fodder for discussion at the Silver Market Phenomenon symposium coming up October 2-3 in Tokyo, where I’ll be attending, presenting and doing some reporting.
Scenario analysis looks at various possible outcomes from different policy actions, and can be a powerful tool for decision-makers when it’s used to get a more complete understanding of how various decisions impact outcomes. Here’s how WEF/Mercer describe the global aging challenge:
In many countries around the world, a rapidly ageing population is putting severe pressure on pension and healthcare systems. The demographic time bomb is ticking in both developed and less developed countries.
The UN expects that by 2050, the old-age dependency ratio at a global level will have more than doubled; from 11 elderly persons per 100 working age persons in 2007 to 25 elderly persons per 100 working age persons in 2050. In some countries, the pressures of an ageing population will be even stronger. For example, in China the old-age dependency ratio is expected to rise from 11% to 39% in 2050, in Germany from 29% to 50%, and in Japan and Italy from about 30% to 70%.
These figures mean that one of the key global challenges is the financial sustainability of public pension and healthcare systems in rapidly ageing societies across the world. In addition, challenges in many less developed countries include the lack of formal social security, the diminishing role of families in old-age care, and underdeveloped private pension and health insurance markets.
The report is titled “The Future of Pensions and Healthcare in a Rapidly Ageing World: Scenarios to 2030. It describes three scenarios; the two key variables are global economic growth rates and social/political attitudes. You can download the full report here [large pdf file]. A page describing the initiative is here.
A second phase of work is getting underway, involving workshops to discuss the scenios and implications. If you’re interested in getting involved, more information is here [pdf file].
Finally, here’s a video in which two of the principal researchers discuss the scenarios:
Barack Obama and John McCain participated in a presidential forum on national service held to commemorate the seventh anniversary of 9/11. The forum—part of the Service Nation Summit convened in New York City—was a solemn, thoughtful reflection on how America has changed since 9/11. The focus was on ways that Americans can serve their communities and their country at a time of critical need, and the candidates had a chance to air their ideas on promoting civic engagement.
Much of the conversation revolved around national service among young people—and that’s only natural. Military service plays a big part in the public national service discussion, as do ideas linking help with college tuition and service.
Civic engagement also is a very hot topic among older Americans, especially baby boomers approaching retirement age. Obama and McCain both have acknowledged the importance of engaging older Americans; both candidates propose expanding the Senior Corps, which is part of CNCS and focuses on volunteering for Americans over age 55.
But I haven’t heard much yet from either candidate suggesting that either really gets it when it comes to the potential of unleashing millions of baby boomers on our country’s problems at a time when they have the time—and numbers—to make a difference.
Both candidates are sponsors in the Senate of the Serve America Act, bi-partisan legislation introduced today by Senators Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Orrin Hatch, (R-Utah) that aims to attract 175,000 new volunteers in the next five years. The bill would provide $5 billion over five years to help nonprofits, community organizations and faith-based programs create volunteer opportunities to assist low-income Americans in areas such as education, health care and job training.
Obama’s position on national service is here. McCain’s can be found here.
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently launched a new website specifically targeted for boomers interested in becoming entrepreneurs. 50+Entrepreneur isn’t an overwhelmingly rich site from a content standpoint, but it does include useful information on how to tap the SBA for advice and small business loans. It’s also interesting that SBA is recognizing the enormous need for education and assistance as boomers transition into second careers. Here’s what the agency had to say about it in a press release:
The Wall Street Journal 
