Wake Up, Members. It’s Not That ’70s Show Anymore.
by Dwight Johnston
After hitting 55 years old, Mr. and Mrs. CU Member are thinking about that retirement around the corner. They have recently paid off their mortgage and celebrated with a mortgage burning party. They have also paid off all of the other modest debts they ran up during their productive years. Their kids are out of the house and on their own. Mr. Member has a generous pension to start drawing on in a few years. The pension and Social Security will allow them to live out their golden years comfortably.
Well, wake up, Mr. and Mrs. CU Member. It’s not the ’70s anymore. That fantasy life of the older crowd is a vague dream of the past. The pension, paid-off home, no debt and children out of the house is a world that did exist for a lot of people in the decades leading up to the ’80s, but that is not reality for most in the 2010s.
Yet that fantasy existence for the older crowd has hung around far too long in the thinking credit union gurus and demographic experts. Since joining the credit union industry in 1998, I have heard from every corner of the credit union universe about the need for credit unions to get younger. According to experts, the average age of credit union members is much above that of banks. The urging to get younger seems to make a lot of sense on the surface. Younger members, in demographic theory, are in their borrowing prime and income growing phase of life. They are buying or have bought their first homes, trade cars often and travel. That’s the fantasy life of the younger crowd that still drives demographic thinking.
