Baby Boomers

AMERICANS aren't saving enough for retirement. It's a deeply troubling trend, especially because 76 million baby boomers will retire over the next 15 years. That will put enormous pressure on the Social Security system, which was never envisioned as a full-fledged retirement program. Private savings and company pensions are supposed to sustain a retiree's standard of living. Congress is looking at ways to boost retirement savings. A bill approved by the House Ways and Means Committee last week seeks to encourage workers to set aside more of their paychecks in IRA and 401(k)

The first time Jack Leonard tried retiring, it didn't stick. The next time, retirement was forced on him and he got mad and sued somebody. Now, at age 78, he has given up on the notion of retirement altogether. He started another new job last month, doing what he has always done: selling. "I'm a salesman," said Leonard, who for the past half-century has sold encyclopedias, cemetery plots, mortgages, real estate and - his specialty - insurance. "When you sell something, it's like winning a race."

Clutching a freshly purchased Pilates video, Liz Overstreet, who's 56, pauses for a second to think about what she, a vibrant working woman with toned arms and thick hair, is doing at, of all places, an AARP convention. "I'm not old," Overstreet, who is from Lanham, almost scoffs. "If you're 50 or 55 or 60, you're not old. This show is about - what are they calling it? - 'life after 50.' "We're all here looking for stuff to do, places to go, things to buy and information. Our parents were old people.

The rain is coming down in sheets and the sky over Glen Burnie is the color of boiled cabbage, but you don't care.A hundred yards up Ritchie Highway, a late-model Honda Civic has hydroplaned into a Ford Taurus and the Taurus looks like it might be in the body shop until the Al Gore presidency, but you don't care about that, either. In fact, you don't care much about anything right now, because you're inside the vast, quiet, cocoon-like elegance of the La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery, your body melted into a recliner so comfortable it may take a cattle prod to get you out of this baby.

WASHINGTON - Just how big is the federal deficit of $455 billion? And what difference does it make? It's bigger than all the money spent last year on education at the elementary and secondary levels by federal, state and local governments combined. It's bigger than the defense budget, including the cost of the Iraq war. It swallowed the entire Social Security surplus in one gulp and looked around for more. And that's according to official government statistics. It's more money than all of the nation's cities combined spent on police, fire protection, hospitals, recreation, transportation and any other services during the year, according to Michael Pagano, a professor of public administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Gopal Ahluwalia Around the country, more golf course communities are being built to accommodate the needs of residents looking to spend less time cutting grass and more time on improving their swing and socializing with friends. Many new residents of golf course communities are baby boomers on the verge of retirement, said Clark Turner, a developing partner and builder at Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace, one of Maryland's newest golf communities. "It's a lifestyle," said Gopal Ahluwalia, vice president for research at the National Association of Home Builders.

Winning the lottery, finding a Monet in the attic, or giving Regis Philbin all the right answers -- the stuff of daydreams. For a surprisingly large group, reality may prove to be nearly as gratifying as those financial fantasies, since the estimates of the amount of money that the aging parents of American baby boomers will bequeath to them in the next two decades range from $5 trillion to $20 trillion. The total is imprecise, but what's a few trillion, more or less, between generations?

Experts and workers disagree strongly about whether the next generation of American retirees will have adequate income to live comfortably. The difference in perception is extraordinarily broad. Those who rely on data focus on an abnormally low savings rate, the decline of defined benefit pension plans that provide lifetime income - plus the ever-scarcer supply of employer-provided health insurance for retirees - and Social Security and Medicare programs that will have great difficulty delivering promised benefits.

For some time, I have been reading about the problems created by the vast number of baby boomers reaching retirement age. This week, I became part of the problem. After almost 34 years writing for The Baltimore Sun, I am saying so long. I applied for a buyout - or voluntary separation plan - that the newspaper offered, and since acceptance was based on seniority and I have been around longer than the presses that print the paper, I was a shoo-in. As my last day approached, I prepared to leave the labor force by doing some research about the group I am joining: the retired.

The other Sunday, members of Baltimore's Immanuel Temple A.M.E. Church arrived for services about 9 a.m., spent the morning worshiping, singing and praising the Lord, paused for dinner, resumed worship and still didn't want to go home. They finally left about 8 p.m."It beats going to a psychiatrist," laughs their minister, Dr. Peggy Wall.Immanuel Temple has found a way to offer its members the succor they are seeking, and in return they give one of the most precious of today's commodities -- their time.