The New Golden Girls: Baby Boomers are Moving in Together to Save Money

The growing interest in home sharing, especially for those boomers who are house-rich and cash-poor in expensive housing markets, is being cultivated by nonprofit and commercial programs as well as municipalities. Since 2015, New York, Seattle, Denver, Tucson, Northern California and the metro Washington area all have established or are launching programs.

the National Association of Senior & Specialty Move Managers® blog

Retirement insecurity and rising housing costs prompt more older adults to move in together

By Soo Youn, The Washington Post, February 25, 2022

Jodi Raffa poses for a portrait at her home in Groveland, Fla., this month. She has been searching for a roommate for more than a year to help offset the drastic reduction in her household income after her husband died. (Octavio Jones for The Washington Post)

Jodi Raffa has been searching for a roommate for over a year. Her husband passed away five years ago, and compounding her loss was a 75 percent reduction in her household income.

The 76-year-old lives in a sunny three-bedroom, two-bathroom home overlooking a lake in a 55-and-over community in Groveland, Fla. The sunsets from her back porch are “stunning.” However, the homeowners association fees just went up again and inflation has left her “flabbergasted.”

“I live on a very strict budget and…

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A Guide to Getting Rid of Almost Everything

Once you’ve thanked and said goodbye to the items that do not spark joy, what can you do with them? Patricia Marx, The New Yorker, February 21, 2022 online Kids have no interest in the loot amassed by their materialistic boomer parents. Illustration by Anna Haifisch Lately, I, a maximalist, have been yearning to be […]

A Guide to Getting Rid of Almost Everything

“This allows us the illusion of being minimalist. We’ve substituted spiritual clutter for stacks of paper.”

What’s Going to Happen to All the Crap I’ve Accumulated When I Die?

“We may be choosing cremation over burial these days, but self-storage units serve as the new cemeteries: hilltop monuments to our impoverished pasts, tributes to our heady successes, funerary urns holding all that will be left of us after we’re gone. I’ve come to think of them as shrines…”

the National Association of Senior & Specialty Move Managers® blog

All across America, we boomers are finding ourselves stuck with heirlooms and mementos that we can’t give away. By Sandy Hingston, Philly Magazine (October 2021).

You gather up a lot of flotsam and jetsam in a lifetime. What happens to all your stuff after you die? Illustration by Nathan Hackett

Not too long ago, we had guests over to the house — a rare event anymore, even as we all slowly reenter the World of Other People. The occasion was an annual picnic we host for relatives, back on again after a summer skipped because of COVID. As I welcomed the first arrivals in the living room, I felt compelled to apologize for all the crapola lining my bookcase shelves. I could see my niece and nephew taking in the array of ancient elementary-school art projects, nesting dolls, Rubik’s Cubes, animal carvings, music boxes and pieces of driftwood with a…

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