Boomers go Bust

Kimberley McGee

Monday, Oct. 19, 1998 | 9:58 a.m.

They are dropouts. They take what dropouts do to the ultimate level.

They watch TV when they want. Eat when they want. Go bike-riding at noon, followed by a dip at the lake. Sure, they worry about their future -- but usually it passes with the scenery that whizzes by outside their RV. They know they still have a retirement fund.

"Things that I like, apart from work, came back to me, things I had forgotten I like to do," says Marilyn Abraham, 47, an ex-executive for a New York publishing house and current boomer-on-the-run.

Abraham and her husband Sandy MacGregor, 56, also an ex-publishing executive, have joined a new trend of semi-retirement, trading fast-paced lives for living life.

They put their publishing experience to good use on this topic, writing their first book, "First We Quit Our Jobs: How One Work-Driven Couple Got on the Road to a New Life." Finding stories similar to their own at stops along their journey, they will cruise into Las Vegas on Friday to collect research for their next book -- a baby boomer handbook about giving it up to get it all.

Why they did it

"We had six friends pass away in six months -- unexpected heart attacks, cancer, AIDS, 35 to 55 years old, five of them women," MacGregor says. "Then Marilyn got sick, four months with the flu that turned to pneumonia. We finally put it all together and stopped to say 'What are we doing -- killing ourselves to support this lifestyle?' "

They realized that their lifestyle -- one they had nurtured for more than 25 years each and one that included two homes and lots of expensive toys -- no longer made them happy. What they had cultivated began to own them.

"I love looking after my house," Abraham says. "But we had a weekend house we hardly ever got to ... so I paid someone to look after it."

They decided they needed a break and planned a trip to Alaska. MacGregor spent a lot of time there over the years -- in the airport during many lay-overs. They didn't know that by planning this trip, they were taking steps to change their lifestyle.

"We couldn't find places to stay (in Alaska)," MacGregor says, noting that their only options were to get an RV or a tent. "We don't tent," he says.

So they put a down payment on a large recreational vehicle, complete with all of the amenities.

They went through five states in three months looking for the perfect new "home" that would take them away, just for awhile. But once the dream on wheels was realized, something changed.

"We put $1,000 down and the next week Marilyn quit her job," MacGregor says.

"We had an open agenda in quitting," Abraham says. "We wanted to get away from the fast-paced life, but we did not know where we were going to. Once we did that little thing, we couldn't keep it inside anymore."

For them, life began to mirror Albert Brooks' 1985 flick, "Lost in America," in which a couple -- played by Brooks and Julie Hagerty -- drops out of the rat race and tours the country in a Winnebago.

That was reel life. In real life, Abraham and MacGregor decided, they say, to sell their two homes and lose their busy lives and endless corporate agendas because life is too short to be spent in meetings.

"The workplace had changed, and we were spending great deal of time in meetings," MacGregor says. "They call that work now, being in meetings and being in conference rooms, it's just layers of bureaucracy piled on top of management. It's not as much fun as it used to be, you don't have direct impact," he says, noting that the job he once loved had been diffused and compartmentalized.

Abraham chimes in, pointing a finger to corporations too big to care anymore.

"The contact between employer and employee is not the same as our parents' generation or even since Sandy and I started working," she says. "(Employers) have been rough on people, they get shoved around by big corporations."

A lot of career-minded people have had to reinvent themselves to stay in the game, Abraham says, adding that the game is playing us -- (?????) asking for more money to pay for all the things you need to stay in the game.

"You don't realize you are basing your life around this, but you are," she says. "You realize you are working so you can pay for all the support staff in your life."

Now that she has hit the road, Abraham remembers what it is she loved about attending to her home, gardening and other domestic pleasures lost amid the world of assistants and filofaxes.

"I was paying people to do the things in my life I didn't have time for," she says about assistants to gardeners -- in other words, paying others to live her life while she worked.

"It was just never enough," MacGregor says. "You were always working for the next toy, and then when you got it, you began fighting for the next one."

The water is fine

Sociologists say that this trend will increase as baby boomers get older and more tired of the rat race they created.

"It's clear that there is a lot of movement around the country, people are moving out of larger cities," Zachary Zimmer, assistant professor in UNLV's sociology department, says. "They are following certain kinds of dreams ... and you will see more as baby boomers get older."

Andy Wheeler, owner of Wheelers Las Vegas RV, has noticed an increase of baby boomer customers in the last five years.

"Boomers are a big part of our business, the semi (retired) ones big time," he says. "Usually, one or the other (of a couple) hasn't retired yet ... they need something that has everything you need ... you can just go anytime you want."

Wheeler receives photos and clippings from traveling customers on mini-vacations -- getting away from it all, for a while.

Locally, baby boomer business is thriving for the travel industry, he says. "They are empty nesters, kids are gone, and they are ready to go do things," he says.

But older is not as old as it used to be.

"The notion of retirement is actually changing," Zimmer says. "People are healthier at those ages (40s and 50s), they are livnig longer so retirement is a longer time frame and people are taking advantage of this. It's less of a retirement than it is a change."

Most baby boomers "dropping out" have amassed a great deal in their 30s and 40s.

"When they started in the business world, they would be at the bottom and see the ladder all the way to the top," he says. "We're really talking about executives who were relatively successful and can afford it."

And society is primed for baby boomers to take off after the kids leave and the job has lost its luster of achievement. "There is a formative shift in what we want, what we desire from life," Zimmer says. "The world we live in now is very accomodating to that change, communication is easier -- changes have been going on in society that make easy these types of life changes we see."

What they found

When Abraham and MacGregor began, they say they had nothing to go by, they were on their own in a vast wilderness, literally and figuratively.

"We had no examples, nobody to ask advice of," Abraham says. So they wrote their own. "The book offers (other baby boomers) the opportunity to know that they are not alone, you will survive it and, chances are, be better off for it."

Their perspective on the world changed. "As a New Yorker, you think you have the most sophisticated perspective," Abraham says. "It's incredibly narrow, emotionally and psychologically."

"We were open to meeting new people, but it took us more time to meet new people," MacGregor says. "In Manhattan, you don't make eye contact. We found wonderful people out there, it shocked our systems."

One such encounter occured in Alaska outside a small airport where the couple happened to be riding their bikes.

"We were trying to wangle a ride on an airplane," MacGregor says. "And this guy said he would love to take us, but he only had a two-seater."

They talked for a while, sharing stories before the man went off to work and MacGregor and Abraham rode back to their campsite. The next day, a car pulled into their campsite. Abraham was nervous -- why would anyone pull up to their remote campsite?

"It was the pilot, he said he was sorry he couldn't take us up yesterday but would he would like to have us to coffee with his wife," MacGregor says, still seemingly in awe of the encounter. "We still stay in touch with those people."

That, they say, is what they have gained -- a keener appreciation of family, friends and quality of life.

"I spend whole weeks with my family," Abraham says. "It's much more meaningful than a quick dinner in a restaurant every once in a while."

The final chapter?

It's not the final chapter for these folks, fit and in their prime. Although they currently pay for their own insurance, they say they would rather work for the insurance than for a second home they didn't have time for anyway.

When they first started, MacGregor admits to feeling ambiguous and anxious.

"I worried about finances when we first started this," he says. "The anxiety was blamed on money. I analyzed it and found it wasn't just the money -- that wasn't causing all this anxiety, it was a question of identity. I had been the person that planned their work and worked their plan."

Instead, it was the absence of the corporate shield, the business card in front of him that had spoken of who he was before he had to.

"It is uncomfortable not knowing what you are going to do next and dealing with that discomfort is hard," he says. "You are bombarded with all these new feelings and experiences."

Together they worked through their newfound fears.

"It wasn't 'till later, on the drive back, that I was terrified," Abraham says. "Figuring out, 'what do I do with the rest of my life?' "

Too young for retirement, too old to completely reinvent themselves, they fell back on what drew them to the publishing world in the first place -- book writing, with two books about quitting the rat race, plus an upcoming "camping MacGregor does some consulting and Abraham is a freelance writer, mostly focusing on travel and semi-retirement lifestyle issues.

They enter each new state like a new adventure -- chasing days and flexible agendas that their parents only dared dreamed of after age 65.

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