Baby Boomers Are Blowing Your Inheritance on Bali, Vegas

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- The 77-million member baby boom generation is entering retirement with wanderlust. Boomers are trotting the globe, whether it's to fulfill a bucket list or simply to stretch legs starting to experience circulatory problems. Either way, boomers are creating an unprecedented travel boom.

A study from New York-based Scarborough Research indicates that boomers are more likely than any other demographic group to travel in the U.S. and abroad, and it's a trend that won't slow as more of the famed generation migrates into retirement and out across the globe.

The Scarborough study finds that baby boomers are 9% more likely than all U.S. adults to have traveled domestically for business or vacation purposes in the past year, and 3% more likely to have engaged in foreign travel for business or vacation purposes in the past three years. Nine percent of baby boomers have visited Europe in the past three years and 12% vacationed in the Caribbean.

Boomer wanderlust isn't exactly in line with the acting-out-against-a-staid-culture Beatnik urge or the scientifically curious and courageous Alexander Von Humboldts of history's golden age of exploration, but it is encouraging a "let it ride" mentality after all those years of hard work and saving: 9% of baby boomers have visited Las Vegas in the past year and 34% visited a casino in the same time frame.

All that boomer money isn't going to the roulette wheel -- breathe a sigh of relief now, children of boomers worried about your inheritance -- but the money is on the move.

According to Leisure Travel Trends, over 81 million older adults say they plan to travel in the next year, and will spend $126 billion in the process, and many are making the trips simply to "explore the world." Boomers may be making up for lack of adventure earlier in life, but by nature they tend to be a precautionary lot.

That's how they saved enough to blow it all on wanderlust in the first place, and it's why many boomer will turn to travel insurance before trekking across Bali, or hitting the gaming tables in Vegas.

1 2 Next › Last »