{"id":844815,"date":"2026-09-12T02:56:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T02:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/844815\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T02:56:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T02:56:22","slug":"after-watching-how-boomers-retired-forward-gen-x-is-retiring-backward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/844815\/","title":{"rendered":"After watching how Boomers retired ‘forward,’ Gen X is retiring ‘backward’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most Baby Boomers<\/a> have been retired for years now, while Gen Xers<\/a> are just approaching their retirement era. And according to a finance expert who helps people with retirement planning, Gen X<\/a> is taking an altogether different approach in determining how they want to spend their golden years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Brandt is a Certified Financial Planner who has spent nearly two decades helping people plan for retirement. On his YouTube channel, Even Better Retirement<\/a>, he says that one big difference between the generations is that Boomers have retired \u201cforward,\u201d while Gen X is retiring \u201cbackward.\u201d<\/p>\n

What it means to retire forward<\/p>\n

Brandt shares the pattern he\u2019s seeing when he talks to Boomers and Gen Xers about retirement. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a Baby Boomer sits across from me over Zoom, and I ask them, \u2018What are you retiring to?\u2019 You know, \u2018Why did you save up all this money? What are your retirement plans?\u2019 I hear a very specific kind of answer,\u201d Brandt explains. \u201cThe answers are something along the lines of, \u2018I can\u2019t wait to retire so I can finally spend some real time in my garden. I can\u2019t wait to retire because I want to golf three days a week. I want to retire so I can build cabinets in my garage.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Brandt points out that these are all things the person hasn\u2019t done yet. Boomers are wanting to spend their retirement doing things they always wished they could do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey retire forward towards the activity that they never got to do and will finally have time for,\u201d Brandt says. They\u2019re basically guessing at what they\u2019re going to enjoy. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat can present a problem,\u201d Brandt points out. \u201cRetiring forward is a bet. It\u2019s a guess. You\u2019re guessing that the thing that you daydreamed about at your desk will still feel good on a random Tuesday morning in retirement when you\u2019ve just got nothing on the calendar. Now, sometimes that guess is right, but sometimes I get that phone call that says, \u2018You know, Ben, I\u2019m kind of sick of golf. Is that really all there is to do in retirement?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Why are people so bored in retirement when there is so much to do?\u2014 Makai (@MakaiMind) June 21, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Gen X response: Retire backward instead<\/p>\n

While Boomers look forward, making guesses about how they\u2019ll want to spend their retirement, Gen X is looking backward. They\u2019re using actionable data about what they enjoyed in the past and planning to return to those things when they retire. <\/p>\n

\u201cGen X is retiring back to the thing they used to love when they were younger,\u201d Brandt shares. \u201cI have a client that\u2019s getting the band back together. And I don\u2019t mean that as a figure of speech. I mean an actual band with instruments and amplifiers and a van and a setlist and all those sort of things. In fact, that exact retirement goal has come up more than once or twice in my office. I have another client who\u2019s getting back into skateboarding in retirement. I have another one that\u2019s dusting off his Magic the Gathering cards and hosting tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brandt believes we\u2019re going to see a resurgence of 80s and 90s games and hobbies as Gen X returns to the things they know they\u2019ve enjoyed. He says Gen X\u2019s backward approach is a better way to design a retirement because it\u2019s based on evidence, not a guess. <\/p>\n

Why the two generations differ so much<\/p>\n

What caused Boomers to have the forward orientation while Gen X looks backward? Brandt says it has to do with the examples each generation has had. <\/p>\n

Boomers essentially didn\u2019t have an example of retirement the way it looks today. The Silent Generation nearly all had strong pensions, which barely exist today. They had certainty in their monthly income, but no certainty in how long they might be able to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

\u201cRetirement for many members of the Silent Generation was to retire, then take a cruise, and then die,\u201d says Brandt. \u201cSo, the money was more predictable, but the timeline was anything but predictable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boomers were the first generation to have what Brandt calls a \u201cfull spectrum retirement.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cMany of them had pensions and portfolios and a retirement that could last maybe 20 or 30 years,\u201d he says. \u201cIn some cases, in fact, some people have now spent more time in retirement than they spent in total in the workforce. But nobody handed them a playbook because there just wasn\u2019t a playbook that existed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Boomers have winged it, Gen X has been watching. And seeing how many of their elders have had mixed results with the forward-guessing approach, they\u2019re going the other way. Additionally, Gen Xers don\u2019t have pensions, but rather 401K retirement plans that may or may not be enough. They have less margin of error financially, so they\u2019re being more intentional.<\/p>\n

\u201cGeneration X is the first generation with a full case study sitting right there in front of them,\u201d Brandt says. \u201cSo they are being much more deliberate because they went second, and they are learning in real time from the successes and failures from the previous generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The $500 question Brandt asks his clients<\/p>\n

In his video (as well as his book, \u201cRetirement Starts Today<\/a>\u201c), Brandt shares a mental exercise he does with his clients called \u201c$500 in a time machine\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cI hand you $500, and we hop into the Delorean, and we set the dial back to your 13th birthday,\u201d Brandt says. \u201cNow, you\u2019ve got to spend the money on yourself, and you\u2019ve got to spend it by the end of the day. Those are the only real rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 13, you understand the value of a dollar, you\u2019ve developed enough judgment to thoughtfully weigh options, but you\u2019re still young enough to have a vivid imagination. <\/p>\n

\u201cThirty years in corporate America hasn\u2019t crushed your soul yet,\u201d Brandt says. <\/p>\n

What do you buy with that $500? Especially if no one is telling you how to spend it and you can be as foolish as you want? <\/p>\n

\"teenager,Maybe you loved painting when you were 13 but haven\u2019t picked up a brush in decades. Photo credit: Canva<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it\u2019s a mountain bike,\u201d says Brandt. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a drum kit. Maybe it\u2019s a dungeonmaster guide and some 12-sided dice. Recently, I heard about National Geographic magazines. This retiree loved learning about places that she\u2019d never been, and then that became a desire to explore the planet in retirement.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Gen X, it\u2019s about youthful interests<\/p>\n

Thinking about what you would spend a chunk of money on at 13 can help people figure out what they might like to spend their money and time on in retirement. If you still love that thing, you can start making small investments toward it. If you don\u2019t really like it anymore, you just cross it off the list. <\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of those are wins, and both of those are real, accurate, actionable information,\u201d Brandt says. The key is tapping into interests and hobbies that grabbed you in your youth. If they still resonate, your retired self might just want to bring them back.<\/p>\n

You can follow Brandt at Even Better Retirement on YouTube<\/a> and find his book here.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in July. It has been updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most Baby Boomers have been retired for years now, while Gen Xers are just approaching their retirement era.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[357570,78065,28,6067,87232,357571,147,530],"class_list":["post-844815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-annie-reneau","tag-boomers","tag-business","tag-gen-x","tag-generations","tag-how-to-human","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}