Tips for empty nesting:
— Expect to rekindle or renegotiate your relationship with your spouse or significant other. There’s often a “U-shaped” curve of marital satisfaction over the lifespan (high in the beginning, dipping when children are born, and going up again later in life).
— Prepare to have more free time. Test out new activities in midlife that may carry over into life in retirement.
— Most people realize the importance of financial planning for retirement, but planning and preparation in personal and social domains are equally important.
— Feeling some level of ambivalence and loss about your kids leaving home is normal.
Source: Karen Hooker, professor and chair of Gerontology and Family Studies, Oregon State University
I’ve now made it more than two weeks in the world of empty nesting, where lots of Baby Boomers have gone before me with exhilaration, trepidation and an open wallet.
My youngest, my princess, is several states away in college now. My son, my prince, is two years ahead of her.
And I keep stumbling upon new ground in the most ordinary of places. Like when I sort the laundry, peek in the pantry or wonder what the heck we were thinking when we got an SUV. I’m learning there’s a lot more I need to figure out.
This is what’s known as an “opportunity” for businesses. Any time Americans go through a major life transition, habits and buying patterns change, sometimes dramatically. That gives companies a fresh shot at snagging us when we are disoriented.
There are other shakeup moments, of course, that get marketers even more stoked. Like when you have a baby or move to a new town. But empty nesters aren’t bad hunting.
Empty nesters and Baby Boomers in general, I’ve read, have been viewed as big spenders on beauty items, home decor, the latest personal technology, health and fitness, cruises and self-improvement lessons.
Del Webb, an arm of Atlanta-based PulteGroup that builds communities aimed at active adults (which kind of makes me think of a gray-haired guy with one too many shirt buttons undone), did a survey of empty nesters a couple years ago. It found that nearly one fifth of them plan to move soon. And more than three-fourths are saving to blow it out on a trip of a lifetime or other travel.
I guess the message is: once the kids are gone, the party gets cranking.
But I think somebody forgot to send me and a bunch of others the invitation. Marketers might believe I’m a wallet on the hoof, but so far, empty nesting for me is no financial windfall.
As I mentioned in another column recently, I'm helping to pay two college bills. I think of them as higher education mortgages, except I don't get a wing of a chem lab named after me. I've read how new empty nesters are being targeted by one financial services company to take out home equity loans. What a bummer. I'd be more hopeful if companies rushed to market me surfboards and flying lessons.
My wife and I have traveled recently, but going forward, we’re focusing on less expensive routes, like annual passes to Georgia state parks. We’re contemplating picnics rather than expensive restaurants, bike rides instead of shows. We’re hanging out with friends more but in inexpensive ways, like gathering around a campfire or at a lake beach.
So far, this whole empty nesting thing has been easier than I expected.
Mostly, I’ve just been confronting evidence of the obvious: that it’s back to just me and my wife, the way we were 20 years and a lifetime ago.
I sorted the laundry the other day and realized there were just two piles. Two? So I no longer have to struggle to unravel some piece of feminine clothing with straps and strings and unexplained offshoots and try to guess who it belongs to.
No more hearing, “Daddy, really? You thought THAT was mine?”
And when I’m rooting around in the kitchen for the peanut butter I’m suddenly surprised at the breadth of foods that my wife and I didn’t buy with ourselves in mind. My teeth ache when I just look at the boxes of sugary cereal.
I’ve also noticed our house and cars have suddenly gotten much bigger. Like in one day. Why do we have so much … space?
I look at the empty bedrooms in our house, and I’m a little choked up about the kids not being there.
A friend warned me to brace myself.
Yes, he said, you’ll have lots more time with the kids gone.
But the toughest part, he said, without any apparent shame, is deciding what your new purpose will be in life. Because your over-riding focus will no longer be on raising your kids.
I haven’t figured that one out yet. I know that I like adventures. And that’s surely what I’ve got ahead of me.
In the meantime, I suspect plenty of businesses will be offering me options for how to stay entertained while I figure it all out.
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