Americans are buying recreational vehicles at the fastest rate in more than a decade. Unfortunately for RV makers, many are hitting the road in smaller, less expensive models.
North American retail sales of RVs in the first 10 months of 2015 grew 11% from a year earlier to 334,528 units, according to Statistical Surveys Inc., a research firm. That was slightly above the prerecession peak in 2007.
Better-informed customers, though, are keeping a lid on profit margins. Consumers are doing more homework online, sometimes buying from faraway dealers.
North American sales of RVs total about $16 billion a year. Prices range from around $5,000 for low-end, folding camping trailers to more than $200,000 for higher-end motor homes with engines and driving compartments—and upward of $1 million for the largest and most luxurious customized models.
As the U.S. population ages, the average age of RV owners has edged down to 48 from 49 a decade ago, according to the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, a trade group.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2015
The paradigm of retirement has shifted.
The old retirement pattern of a long career of hard work, followed by no work and freedom to pursue leisure activities, is no longer typical or even attractive.
Baby Boomers in their 60's begin to think about how to retire from their professions or occupations. The combination of longer anticipated lifespans, entrenched patterns of consumption, and other factors, such as losses in retirement account funding due to the economy, has led many boomers to consider post retirement as a "next phase" of life (work-wise and otherwise).
Getting ready to look within and re-discover who we are now, and then using that newly found data to fashion what we want to do, to see, to become will be the imprint of our unique "life signature."
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Bottom Line: Retiring boomers are or plan to be energetic and vital, techno-savvy, entrepreneurial and globally aware. They have more to offer along with the desire and ability to offer it. And they have expectations of living for one or even two additional 15-year cycles beyond what was formerly common.
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