Post-Wall Street
By Martha Randolph Carr
The world keeps evolving whether or not we choose to keep up and change with it. Intellectually, we all get that but it doesn’t mean we’re paying attention to the implications of standing on the sidelines.
When we’re young it seems quaint to note how difficult it is for our parents and their friends to adjust to the latest technology and the faster pace. When we’re older it begins to feel a little overwhelming that we have the added responsibilities of keeping an eye on teenagers, our career, and our retirement account and relearn how to use a phone.
There was a time when the phone was only used to hear someone’s voice on the other end. Checking your mail meant walking down to the end of the driveway and research required showing up at the library and pouring over books.
Now, a phone is a quaint term for a small handheld computer that holds the mail and all of the research in the world in the palm of the hand. Occasionally people over 35 use it to talk to someone while the under 35 set post a twitter that automatically feeds out to everyone they know. Tomorrow the phone may be able to diagnose your cough and carry on a conversation
and we will be asked to change again.
But it’s not necessarily the technology that’s getting in our way as much as the constant change in basic routine. All of these new things are monkeying with the habits we do everyday that we’d like to move to the back of our brain so that we can take a breather, particularly in the era that appears to be dawning, post-Wall Street.
Normally, one of the best perks about adulthood is the ability to coast just a little on what was learned in the teenage years about technology and how the everyday stuff works, including how to buy a house or plan for retirement. However, none of that information may be accurate anymore and all of us could be looking at starting from scratch, including the savviest investors.
That’s the spot we’ve found ourselves in and for the baby boomers born in the era after WWII there is a twist on the old cliché of ‘sandwich’ generation. Ten years ago the phrase meant, taking care of elderly parents and young children at the same time. Now, it may come to mean those who were brought up listening to stories about the Great Depression from people who lived through it and then being the main breadwinner during the sequel.
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