Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg business Week, Insight from the reporters and editors that bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
No question the idea of safety on a lot of minds after the events over.
The last few days.
Absolutely okay.
We heard from law enforcementerience stuff, law enforcement folks in Las Vegas a little earlier today. They talked about what happened in Las Vegas. We heard earlier in the day too about what happened in New Orleans. The event New Orleans talking that one specifically being called terrorism. FBI officials say they haven't found evidence linking separate deadly New Year's attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas. Those are still unfolding,
though the details there. The two incidents, though, rattling Americans as they rang in New Year's, prompting heightened concerns over US security less than three weeks before Donald Trump is set to take over as president.
And then there was the spate of plane crashes late last month. The Azerbadjhan Airlines flight that crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, and then you also had the flight that crashed in South Korea, killing all but two on board. There's a lot of things going on that make us question safety security in today's environment.
It's something Sean Galloway is always thinking about. He's CEO at Proacts Safety. It's a consulting firm that for more than thirty years has provided strategies for improving safety within different organizations, including organizations such as Boeing. He joins us from Houston, Texas. Sean, good to have you with us. Give us an idea of how you think about events over the last week, because what I just shared, we're certainly they really run the gamut of things that affect
a person's safety and individual safety. But they're also rare, but they're top of mind because they're in the news. How do you think about events such as these?
These are Carrollton, thank you for having me on here. These are some of these black swan events that you rarely see coming. However, they're often indicators. And what I've often said is anytime you're surprised by a significant event or a tragedy. Either you weren't paying attention to the indicators, you weren't giving them the attention that was necessary. It's it's unfortunate that events like this have to have to
necessitate a change. If you look and there's a lot of great people that work for Boeing, I know many of them personally, and if you go back over a decade two thousand and five and several years later, you look at what happened with the BP events, the Texas City explosion in March of five that fifteen people lost
their lives and over one hundred cerrusly injured. Then we had deep Water Horizon, the Waconda incident, both of those moments before, days before both of those locations, the rig and the plant vpleehip was there to give them an award for their safety performance, and then both of those tragedies occurred. It's the same situation kind of here. In my opinion with what's happening with Boeing is that they're a great organization, a legacy organization again in my opinion,
with a lot of wonderful people with great intent. They also, from what I've seen, went from an organization that I would refer to having strong signals to an organization that had weak signals. It was an organization run by engineers. Engineering was often on the floor, people could talk about things, and unfortunately, over time it seem some of that became suppressed.
Sel and take a step back for us, because we are intrigued by your relationship or your workings, your company's workings with Boeing in particular. Tell us how long you've been involved with the company. Tell us about kind of maybe the changes that you've seen and your involvement in helping them get through what has felt like crisis after crisis after crisis. Although things seem to be getting better, but it does feel like there's still a lot of questions to be answered.
Yeah, I can't speak to the detailed specifics of the type of work that I do with organizations like Boeing. My work focuses on the pursuit of excellence and safety. So that's both performance and that's culture. So organizations like Boeing will bring people like me in from time to time to make sure they're not breathing their own exhaust, to make sure they're truly seeing things as they are, So they like an objective. Third party individual take a
look at things. They also bring in people like me to keynote it at some of their events.
What does that mean? What does that mean to keynote it?
What does that mean when you come into Boeing and a company that's dealing with some really serious issues, what does it mean to keynote it.
So this was in twenty seventeen, so it was prior to prior to the catastrophic events that happened in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen with the with the plane crashes. Keynoting a private event, so company leadership was there together to look at their long term safety strategy, look at their their business strategy. And at the time I had just authored a book called Forecasting Tomorrow, kind of looking at
making predictions over the next ten years. So they brought me in to serve as a keynote speaker to that and that's what led to me having the privilege of walking the seven thirty seven Max factory floor in the end of February twenty seventeen. So for me personally, it's always stuck with me. Did I see one of those two planes in the assembly process? Obviously I'll never know, but it's It's something that's always resonated with me because most of my work is on the proactive side. That's
the name of our company. However, we are brought in from time to time on either side of litigation, but primarily I'm brought in from the company standpoint to make sure events like this are they want to offer it so before.
It goes so, before anything goes wrong, right to say, hey guys, here's what you need to be thinking about.
That's exactly right. And sometimes this is done through attorney privileged documents so we can be fully transparent and tell them, you know, these are the issues. This is because culture is a byproduct. And now the FA and now all of these third party investigations are identifying these cultural deficits, some things that aren't where they want them to be as an organization. But every company of substance of size is going to have opportunities to improve culture. But culture
is a by product. You can't directly manage the byproduct of culture, just like the results of an organization or byproducts sometimes of collective intentionality or sometimes luck.
Son, you know, I do wonder you know Boing went through a lot of changes corporate culture. We talked about the changing of headquarters and senior management then not being you know, very far from you know, their main plant, to add on the west.
Coast and so on and so forth.
But I am wondering, when you keynoted the address or anything, did you start to see some changes did you give the company and it kind of heads up, like, wait a minute, you guys might want to rethink some of your strategy here.
I think they had a good plan at the time. I didn't have insight into the potential business distructors of that plan because the safety strategy can't be a standalone concept or plan for an organization. The safety strategy has to support the overall business trajectory, but it also has to protect against internal and external risks that might affect that plan. So my work was primarily on the safety
strategy side of things. The business strategy and organizations like Boeing, they typically are forecasting several decades out because they're looking at the next platform. They're looking at, you know, what's going to be coming twenty years from now. I saw some I saw a lot of great leaders with wonderful plans to execute on. But I think the erosion of trust and the erosion of communication and speaking up about
quality or safety concerns. What seems in my opinion to have been unintentionally but suppressed over time is what led to one of the big contributing factors of kind of what's happening today that, as you mentioned, distancing senior leadership, who are ultimately responsible for any organizational culture, even though they're not really part of the culture because they're too
far removed, they're responsible for it. And when I look at the plan that they have today, that's one thing that I would offer some advice on is that if you look at what they're focusing on, it's primarily around changing employee behavior versus what are the leadership truly being held account.
We only have about thirty seconds left, but I open talking about the incidents on New Year's even New Year's Day in New Orleans and Las Vegas, respectively. How would you advise large municipalities just in thirty seconds to keep people safe during events such as these are during New Year's stuff like that.
I think it's largely around having the showing the force, but it's also situational awareness. When I'd served in the military, keeping your head on a swivel. You have to pay attention happening around you at all times. You also have to have contingency plans. And if you look at this recent crash running into a wall, unfortunately, you know that
wasn't part of the contingency thinking. So I think you have to have a proactive side of things, but you also have to have emergency response and reactive because things will not go to plan. And if and when things don't's what's the next step. What happens afterwards. So it's not all about prevention, it's also about recovery, all.
Right, Gonna leave it on that note, Sean, Thank you so much, appreciate it. Sean Galloway, you CEO Proacts Safety. Joining us from Houston, Texas.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five these during listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch US live on YouTube.
Cheryl get this.
Yeah, did a deep dive into the USDA's economic statistics. I was just thinking about Mike McKee the whole time, because I know he like knows all this stuff.
All right, what of that deep dives.
Okay, fine food purchase and consumed outside the so think restaurants, fast, casual bars, hospital, schools, delis.
Yes, they have this information. It's a category.
Accounted for close to sixty percent of food expenditures in the US in twenty twenty three.
Food away from home. It's a lot of money, right, a lot.
Yeah.
Food away from home spending climbed from one point three trillion in twenty twenty two to one point five trillion in twenty twenty three. This is according to the USDA's Economic Research Surface. I didn't know that even existed. It's pretty cool.
Makes sense though.
Phil Catharacis watches this number closely. He's the president and CEO over at IFMA, the Food Away from Home Association. It's a trade group for the food service industry. He joins US from Washington, d C.
Phil.
How are you good, great, Tim, Thanks for having me.
Hey, good to have you on the program this afternoon. Food away from Home. I did decide to sort of deep dive into this because I had never looked closely into this category. But it really is exactly what it sounds like. Anything that you buy outside the house to consume outside the house. So bars, hospital, pre made fooded delis everything, right.
Yes, It's a term that's been used by the government to report and we as an industry just started using it as we transformed our seventy year old organization from being a manufacturer driven to the food away from home, which includes everything you just mentioned, from food manufacturers to the distribution companies, the restaurants, independent restaurant chain restaurants, casual dining, hospitals, kiosks even now delivery is a component of all of this.
That's what I wanted to ask.
Yeah, so it includes like Uber eats, door dash, if I call the local Taie food place and they deliver on their own, it includes that as well.
Yeah, delivery.
You know, coming out of the pandemic, everybody was so caught up with how we were going to transform the business, and the resiliency of the restaurant industry just keeps surprising people. But delivery has become an incredible part of what's taken place and facilitated food away from home.
This is a question that when I was talking to Carol about this during prep. This is a question that she had when I told her this number. She said, is this all about prices? Going up or is it people actually eating more outside the home like transaction?
Yeah, what's happening here?
Yeah?
Yeah, of course, of course she has the it's both. Traffic has been a very stable, i would call it. In some instances, depending on the segment, it's been down. However, because prices have gone up and because of the promotional activity, you are getting more meals, higher check averages, and depending on the segment, you'll get more traffic. I'll give you an example, great organization in Darden and the way they
run their business. They have multiple brands, you know, Olive Garden, and they have all the steakhouses.
So when you look.
At what they do at Olive Garden with the never ending pasta to get people back into their restaurants at thirteen ninety nine, that's a pretty good price point. So they're getting traffic, they're getting a higher check average because they're adding four ninety nine if you put some shrimp or protein.
On that meal occasion.
So the restaurant industry has been able to do some things to keep traffic up and also drive their check averages. However, you know there is a downside to all this, and we'll I'm sure talk about you know, pricing and inflation.
Well, I'm the one that that DAWs my husband crazy and I'm like, yeah, let's get this. And then I'm like get this and the this, and they had this, and then like a simple salad all sudden is like forty bucks no.
And then I'm like, I'm not going to get this delivered. I'm going to go pick it up myself and save twenty five percent because the delivery feel the tip.
We do that all the time, or increasingly, not all the time, but increasingly if we can.
All right, so what's the downside.
Well, the other side of this is we got the inflation monsters roaring the beginning of the year.
The commodity prices are soaring.
I mean just when you think about coffee and chocolate alone and cacao and the coffee beans.
But you know protein.
If you go try to get a steak i ain OU's, you know filet somewhere depending on back to the dart and if you go to Ruth Chris you're going to pay eight ounces. You're probably going to get it for close to like fifty sixty bucks. If you're going to go to Longhorn, you can get a Texas t bone for twenty one to twenty two dollars. So, depending again on what you're looking for and what you're going to get, the concepts and the restaurant tours have been able a
price accordingly. The problem though, is we've got costs in the supply chain. We've got not only commodity costs, but we also have organizational issues with not only the labor coming back, but labor is an issue when you think about just in cash and fast fast food in California starting it for one this year, twenty dollars minimum for being behind the counter at a McDonald's or a Burger King.
So not only is it just availability of talent, but it also costs some money to be able to get the right people in the restaurant and make sure that the service is where you want it to be and they're trained and you don't have any problems.
Hey, hey, I.
Want to jump in real quick, twenty dollars minut wage for fast food workers in California. With the hindsight of a few months after that has been implemented, How has that worked out in your view.
And how does the industry your members like? Are they happy about it?
Yeah? No, no, one's happy about it, and.
Then maybe the people who are working are happy.
Right, the people that are working are happy about it, and it's not about that. I mean, we want to make sure workers are getting paid fairly, and you know, there's a balance here so that employment doesn't go down and people don't close restaurants because some have because of the labor problem. But you've got a situation in California where there's a panel of industry experts apparently that are going to determine what the rates are going to be,
and it's a little bit awkward. Everybody's been trying to find a way to manage it properly, to keep to keep the staff, you know, feeling good about what's going on. But at the same time is a regulatory issue that is going to cause havoc and confusion as it goes across the states. Because there's also a tax credit a
tip credit problem coming down the road. So when you start the factor that out and then you see what's happened with organized labor, people are paying attention to restaurant staff and servers and the back of the house and everybody. You need to be part of a happy, go lucky team that provides a great experience.
Listen, we know, certainly coming off the pandemic, what a tough industry it is, the restaurant industry overall, even some of the really established names, the well known chefs and their organizations. I mean, it was not an easy environment, to say the least. Having said that, I mean, what is top of mind for the members of your organization as they look at twenty twenty five? Is it food costs? Is it labor costs? Is it the administration? Is it
regulatory oversight? Is it concerns about the economy, the US economy and consumers pulling back?
What is it?
Oh my god, Carol, you named it all.
I mean, part of what we talk about here is the VUCA environment when things or you know, there's volatility on certainty, complexity and ambiguity coming together. Well, that was happening when we came out of COVID. But now you've got you know, attention deficit disorder meets LUKA. Right now you have to be focused on what's going on in your restaurant, meaning that you've got to be careful with what's happening with your costs, your menu costs.
You've got to be careful with what you've got on your menu.
You got to have happy people restaurant in your restaurant, creating a service environment that people love. You've got to be on top of your promotional activity.
To balance that out.
You've got to be a good partner with your supply chain and the distribution community that's serving you and the manufacturers that are trying to get you product. You cannot be caught up in all this anticipatory, you know, distractions around tariffs and the immigration policy and some of these things that have been chatted about. Everybody's a little bit
worried about what might happen. But you know, right now, I think everybody's spoken is really beyond the regulatory environment, and we have things in a regulatory that are taking place already that we've got to worry about. But it's those factors that again make up your P and L and make sure that the industry is not going to get caught up in some whipsaw because somebody is expecting that there might be.
Terriffs or there might not be terriffs.
There are things for us, particularly regulatory right now, that are taking place that are important to focus on that will cost restauranteurs in the supply chain and our members' money.
Hey, one of the things Tim and I spend a lot of time talking about is the global food supply chain and the impact climate change has had on all of it. I am curious too that what you are hearing from members on that front how it is getting more difficult in terms of accessing the necessary food supplies that they need, and then how that potentially plays into inflationary pressures sticking around longer.
Yeah, that's thank you for asking that question. One of the things that's going on right now.
You're hearing a lot about it, and I've heard some of your experts talk about a cocoa and coffee. I mean the weather effects across the world. Are the adverse weather conditions that are taking place, particularly in the South in South America right now. The things that are happening, that drought in Brazil, the situation out in the Ivory Coast again not only crazy weather patterns but also a
disease and the crop. When you're starting to look at those type of effects in the supply chain with raw materials that we import, that does drive prices to all time high, especially when you think about cocoa, and it also causes problems because you can't recover very quickly.
In some of these instances. There's a thing called swollen.
Swollen shoot disease that goes into the vines, and to replant coco something might take five years. So there's an effect with that. And then, of course the effect being halfway around the world is the supply chain, the cost of moving product from one end of it to the other, and that continues to be a point of concern when you're thinking about long term and you're thinking about short term, particularly when you're trying.
To get bill coffee for less than five bucks.
We only have thirty seconds left bird flu. How concerned are your customer? How concerned are your members about bird flu?
Yeah?
Since come up, everybody's a little freaked out about it because we did have it before the holidays.
Folks are managing it.
It's very localized, and at this point in time, it doesn't it hasn't created any major issues right now in the supply chain.
We're all watching it, Okay, Phil, We're gonna have to leave it there. Hopefully.
That's the extent of what happens when it comes to bird flu. Phil Cafaracus. He is president and CEO over at IFMA, the Food Away from Home Association, a trade group for the food services industry.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play an Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Okay, we know about the Greatest Generation. Check the Silent Generation.
Check.
Do you know there's someone there's a generation before the Greatest Generation? What is it they are called?
Are you serious?
Yeah? The Lost Generation?
Oh, I do know that. I do know that.
And then I guess we forget about everyone before that.
Right, And then there's right that's neither here, sorry everybody. And then there's the massive.
Boomers boomers, Gen X, Gen X.
Millennials yep, Gen Z yep. Then where else?
Then it gets a little complicated. Yeah, Gen Alpha that's twenty thirteen to mid twenty twenties. Okay, those are my kids, I guess. Okay, and then now that we're in the mid twenty twenties, it's time for the next generation. We're talking Generation Beta. Okay, and they're born from twenty twenty five to twenty thirty nine, so most of them aren't even.
Alive yet, all right, so we're waiting, but we're wait ejecting what there are a few of them, what they're going to be like?
Okay, birthday to them.
Despite that, PGM set out to figure out what this generation would look like. They interviewed doctors, scientists, parents, and more two thousand Americans to get predictions for the future of Generation Beta.
David Blanchett is managing Director, portfolio manager, and head of Retirement Research at PGIM. He joins us from Lexington, Kentucky. David, Happy New Year. Great to have you here with Tim and myself. So tell us about this project because we really haven't talked about this next generation, Generation Beta. So tell us what you set out to do.
Well, you know, first you all kind of introduced this idea of generations, and you mentioned Baby Boomers.
They were actually the first generation to kind of have a name.
It was essentially a group of individuals at a certain age and right, so we've kind of moved forward to the time you mentioned the Boomers, gen X, millennials.
You know, the Alphas. Now we have the Beta.
So everyone born on January first, twenty twenty five for the next fifteen years is going to be part of Generation Alpha. And obviously there's still a lot of those babies to come. But you know, we were curious, like, what what might the future hole? Like what are we
looking at in terms of this newest generation? So, as you all mentioned, a pretty exhaustive survey, you know, reviewing kind of expert opinions, surveying two thousand Americans and lots of interesting perspectives people have about you know, things like life in general, retirement, longevity, just lots of interesting predictions about the future.
I mean, don't you think if you went back in time I'm just trying to figure out a corollary here that makes sense. But if you went back in time, you know, to the to the nineteen seventies and said to folks, what do you think people born, you know, in the nineteen eighties to the two thousands would experience in life, Like they're not going to be talking about smartphones and you know, AI, they're going to be talking
about flying cars, because that's what we thought would happen. Right, There's this disconnect between predictions and what actually happens right well, and as.
I think that that's why like this is I think this is informative, it's useful, but it's really difficult to think about what's going to happen in the future. So you know, for example, you know, one of the questions in the survey was like, what would you call this generation? And you just said it a second ago, but like the most common nickname was Generation AI, like even even three or four years ago, that probably isn't the name that we'd used to describe this later, this latest cohort.
So I do think there is a lot of things that are changing, but to me, like this idea of change was probably the biggest theme in the survey, where there is lots of expectations where you know, kind of every facet of raising children, of saving for retirement, of planning.
For health care.
People partople change in the future, especially for this generation BETA.
What about in terms of I'm really curious about how we work right here, we are four years off the pandemic. We thought it was going to be transformational, and I guess for some who are still working from home, it is, but there's a lot more people who are being pressured to come back to the office. How do you think about this generation or what did you hear about how they think they will be working?
Sure, so eighty three percent of respondents thought that retirement will look completely different for.
Generation Beta, And well, why is that?
It's because there's idea of many retirements and this idea that as we kind of evolve through the workforce, we're.
Going to be changing changing jobs.
So, you know, other stats would be that seventy four percent of people thought that Generation Beta would work less than five days a week. Eighty percent of respondents thought that people would have three distinct career paths over time. So I think that there is this kind of emerging perspective that this idea of having kind of one job and one profession for you know, thirty or forty years, isn't the future of work based upon how things are changing?
David?
Is that because we're going to be living to one hundred and fifty.
So yeah, we're going to have these many retirements, We're going to have these many you know, transformations in our careers.
So I think that people will be living longer, you know, So I focus on retirement research and I don't think we're going to have most people living to one hundred and fifty, but we are going to see improvements in longevity, right, and those improvements kind of radically create complexity around me on how we plan for retirement. And so to me, it isn't all that surprising that there's this perspective that, you know, Generation Beta isn't going to retire right to
the extent that we can. We can you know, create jobs and create abilities to work longer. Lots of folks that want to retire. Actually, personally, I don't love the word retirement out the word financial independence. What we want to be able to do is is to save money and eventually stop working. And I think that's where we're seeing this perspective around Generation Beta, where they're going to be this in theory, this group of individuals that doesn't
have the same retirement as everyone else. That being said, you know, it's that that blows my mind, is that they're not going to be you know, eight seventy until the you're twenty ninety five, So retirement in seventy years is going to be very different than it is today.
To be young born in twenty thirty nine, sure would be nice already, right, already, I'm thinking about it. One thing that I was surprised and you're reminding me about this is in a history class in college I remember studying. I believe it was in like the nineteen twenties, maybe the rise of leisure and the fact that people had they weren't stuck in the fields, you know, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty
five days a year for the first time ever. So there are certain things started happening, and I could be getting the dates wrong, and I know I'm over generalizing here, but I think if they were to look at our lives now, they'd say that, oh wow, those people never work. But when are we going to have like a four day work week or a three day work week because automation is going to be doing such a good job.
Are you asking for them or for you?
I'm asking for me. One.
Are the markets going to only be open four days a week and then we only have to work four days a week?
That's what I want to know.
So, you know, seventy four percent of respondence in the survey thought that Generation BETA would work less than five days a week, and so I think that again, there is this idea of work becoming more fluid versus this kind of structured nine to five thing. Obviously, we saw, you know, during COVID, a rise of remote work people and not even be in the office through their jobs, and a lot of companies going to pull people back
into the office. I think that there is this emerging perspective that this requirement to be you know, in at a desk in an office five days a week, it's not gone, but it's kind of slowly evolving into something else that is a lot more flexible.
One thing I want to talk about is healthcare.
We talked about longevity, and I feel like there's a bunch of things here in terms of your findings. Half of adults believing that cancer will be cured by gen beta, percent predicting that gen beta will have individualized healthcare based on their DNA, And I feel like we continually are
increasingly tim are having conversations about individualized medicine. Talk to us a little bit about more about that, because it's an incredible cost to society, it's an incredible cost to individuals that we still haven't figured out some of these major ailments. So pull that together for us.
Yeah, I mean I think that that's kind of an optimistic perspective.
You know, I too saw the fifty one percent stat of thinking that Generation made would cure cancer that I think that that to me, what what resonates looking across the response is just this idea again of kind of like the evolving state of healthcare. I think the idea of personalized medicine. You know, there's some questions about like
AI things like that. I think the way that individuals can receive you know, treatment is going to change, and I think that that was a key theme among the responders in the survey.
So healthcare.
I think that people think it's going to evolve in the future and radically affect Generation MADA in terms of how they enjoy their lives and also when they eventually.
Retire, okay, get better, get to work. I was kind of hoping cancer would be cured before then.
Fingers crossed. I would love to see that. The other thing is just one more stat on all of this. Fifty nine percent think AI artificial intelligence will be able to predict and prevent health issues before symptoms appear. And you know, it's just as you know, where you have spent you're in the investment world the last two years talking about nothing but AI, generative AI, large language models,
and so on. In the impact, although I think people are thinking it's going to take a while for all of this to pay off and be put to work.
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the questions was, like sinctiorsent responds think that AI is going to raise their kids, and so I think that that there's a lot of a lot of a lot of positive expectations in here around artificial intelligence and how you know, it's role in terms of of of education, in terms of the role of kind of helping individuals have better personalized experiences based upon their unique preferences.
I'm wondering about technology because and the folks you interviewed, how did their how did their answers vary based on who you talk to? Because you talked to doctors, you talk to parents, you talked to technologists, you talk to scientists. How did they think differently about different generations?
Well, you know, it's funny, you know, one of the differences that I noticed with the responses was, like the like the older generations, like boomers, we're as optimistic about like the the possibilities the future of the Generation Beta, you know, beyond that, you know, if you look at just like maybe at a higher level, if you look at things like like like regrets and the things that that.
People would change based upon their lifestyles.
You know, you have things like like saving for retirement and spending time with kids, things like that, Like, you know, those those were very different for older Americans versus younger Americans. So a lot of the questions I didn't see big differences in in terms of you know, looking at like boomers, millennials, gen X, but you do see it in terms of things people say, well, like what I wish I had done differently looking back on my life.
Yeah, I mean it happens all the time, right whatever generation it's called.
Right, Like, I think there's a lot of like social media posts that go viral about that.
Now.
Yeah, you know, people who interview people at the end of their lives about what they regret, what they want to do more of, And it's never it's never let me just say, it's never tweeting more.
That's what I'll tell you.
They never say I wish I would have spent more time tweeting.
That was a safe play. That was a safe play. Hey.
Having said that, I was kind of drawn to a statistic that you shared with our producer and our team. The people surveyed estimate that Generation Beta will need approximately one point eighty eight million dollars to sustain in retirement.
That seems like a low number.
It's well, I think it's all it's all relative. It's it's a big number. But like I said, I mean, we're talking about people retiring, you know, seventy sixty five years from now. I think that I think there are some really important things here, Like there was one I think useful staff that like eighty percent you know, think that Generation BETA should, like in a perfect world, start saving for retirement as soon as the child's worn.
And that's probably not realistic.
I think most you know I have, I have, I have four alphas myself, no betas, And that's that's tough.
Yeahta yet, no.
Bady's I know. I think I think I think no Plan Beta is on our happ But I think.
I think that there is this no David, your wife is calling.
Like, retirement's tough, right, And so I think that that one thing that will make retirement tough is we talked about earlier is this increasing longevity. But I also don't love that word, Like I said, retirement. I think that I think that it's going to be more possible for us to do things that are economically additive at later ages, right, and and I mean along those lines, like you know, one of the important stats in the report was the number one regret of all respondents was that they didn't
save enough for retirement. Okay, what's really interesting is is that is never the highest regret of any of the generations. So like not saving for retirement is this kind of regret that kind of echoes across generations, but it's.
Never the biggest thing.
Like if you look at like like boomers, for example, they wanted to you know, spend more time with their loved ones and take care of their health things like that. So that I think that, you know, we like there is that big number, that one point eight eight million, But I think what's important is is that is you know, things like not saving for retirement you know, was actually a bigger focus among younger respondents.
But they're worried about.
Like everything, like like they just have like regret scalore As individuals get older, those regrets spayed away. But to your question and point, retirement is very expensive. If we start living to age one hundred and ten hundred and twenty, it's even more expensive than today.
But is it also something that's more top of mind maybe for younger generation because it's not like when my dad retired and there was pension and VA benefits and social security and investments. I mean, there was all these different pools and it's a very different environment for a lot of workers nowadays.
What it is.
I mean, so we've got I think, you know, like personally, I don't love the fact that the trust fund for Social Security is projected to go bankrupt in about about ten years. It creates a lot of uncertainty around around like the bedrock of our retirement being there. But also like like we've we've entered a world of personal responsibility for retirement savings. You've got to save your in your four oh and K and your I E. Very things
like that. And I think that that's a really good way to help individuals accumulate money for retirement, but you need to make sure they have access to a plan. But you know, kind of a bigger problem to some extent is Okay, you get to retireronment and you have
I don't know, half a million dollarsmars. It's like now what like you train these people to say for thirty or forty years, and all of a sudden you've got to figure out how you're going to spend down that money and you don't know how long you're going to live, what the markets are going to do, and associreaated bankrupt and so I think that we have we have a pretty good system, but it places a lot of responsibility
on the shoulders of the average American. And that's where you know, having help, having an advisor, using certain tools resource I think that's really becoming more valuable because you only have one shot at retirement. You can't screw up, and so getting help to figure out what the best thing to do is is just becoming I think more important for all Americas.
Hey, are you concerned at all about a lack of Generation BETA actually appearing? Because childcare has gotten so expensive and it's so expensive to have kids. I know, I don't need to tell you how much you have to say for college considering you have four of them, but it's just gotten so expensive, and I know my generation fewer and fear people are having kids. Is that a concern?
It is? And so it was really interesting.
Is one of the questions they asked was, you know, among those who aren't going to be having children, like why is that? And so my wife is a veterinarian and and you know, one of the top reasons was
people are viewing their pets as a child. And you know, if you follow this trend in other countries, you see this in other places where individuals are kind of substituting having kids or having pets, and the number one sided reason often is just the costs and the time it takes to actually raise children.
All right, So we've just got a couple of minutes left here, and I am curious with all that is said and done, all that we've talked about.
You know what is kind of top.
Of mind for you guys, pigim you guys invest Like, I don't know, what are you thinking about this next generation, this beta generation?
So you know, to be perfectly honest, like, I'm not incredibly worried about about one year one year old saving for retirement, right, I think that it's gonna be it's gonna be an issue. I think I think what I am what I'm I'm more focused on as individuals who
are investing for today. So I spent a ton of time thinking about, like, how do we create solutions for individuals who around retirement and and to me, it does get to this earlier point just about where you know, everyone's retirement is their own right and for better or for worse, we all have to worry about the markets misbehaving about living a long time, and it's just it's just really really complicated.
So I think, you know, at a high.
Level, the job of all of us needs to be when we're young to make good financial choices, to save in our four one K and invest well. But but but the decisions you've got to make when you get closer to your retirement just are really really complex. And you know, I'd like to think that things are gonna get easier for generation Beta, but it's probably the opposite.
And so hopefully, you know, we can learn from a lot of the mistakes, for better or for worse, that individuals make today so that future generations as they retire have things a bit easy.
I did a college calculator while I was away break, and.
Oh, for what's going to cost you?
For your kids.
Not pretty.
What's the number you came up with more than six hundred thousand dollars for a private if you want to go to private school.
One or for both for one for one?
Good luck, honey, all right, David, we got to leave it there. Hey, listen, Thanks so much. This was fun, interesting and enlightening. David Blanchett, Managing director, portfolio manager and head of Retirement Research at PGIM, joining us from Lexington, Kentucky. No, like, that's one of the things we talk about all the time, right, the cost of college.
Yeah, it's uh, it just keeps coming up.
And up and up. Intimidate.
Well, see they can keep going up and up and up.
I know twenty years ago you're probably saying that.
Yeah, exactly. I don't know.
I don't know that I ever thought it, but we've talked so many times, like over the years about how it's been outpacing inflation and it just continues to do so.
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