Picture a 58-year-old getting the band back together, literal instruments, amplifier, van, and all, or dusting off a skateboard he hasn’t touched since the Reagan administration, and calling it a retirement plan. Financial planners have given this a name: “retiring backwards,” a wave of Gen Xers returning to the hobbies of their youth instead of dreaming up new pursuits the way baby boomers did.
Benjamin Brandt, the founder of North Dakota’s Capital City Wealth Management and the host of the YouTube channel “Even Better Retirement,” has watched the pattern develop across his client base and offers a clean explanation for why.
“Baby boomers look forward and make a guess,” he says. “Whereas Gen X is going backwards with known information.”
Sherry, the host of “This Gen X Life,” puts it this way: “The ’90s lifestyle might be the only way you retire at 62.” Down the age scale, the children of Gen X are dominating the zeitgeist as Gen Z’s love of all things analog revives many of the specific hobbies their parents grew up with, from physical media collecting to film photography, thrifting, arcade-style gaming, and even going to the movies. Where Gen Z seems to go along as an antidote to digital overload, the same hobbies are the only retirement lifestyle that many can afford.
