Baby Boomers Will Trigger Many Trends
Boomer companions/caregivers where chosen as one of the top jobs of the near future, as chosen by MSNBC. They’re absolutely right. In fact, the Boomers will trigger several huge trends that have already begun to reveal themselves and will be in full swing just 2 years from now.
There are 78 million Boomers, and in the next couple years many of them will be turning 65, making them eligible for Medicare. 78 million! To give you an idea of how many people that is, it is the same amount that live in our three most populated states:
The Baby Boomers are going to begin retiring and hitting up that Medicare. Expect a surge in age-related illness/treatments such as Alzheimer’s and Diabetes in the next couple years. But is that really all that 78 million people can give us?
Hell no. You see, these people will be retiring and that will set in motion oodles of trends.
To start, someone must fill their positions at the workplace as Baby Boomers are one third of America’s workforce. This is something I pointed out in a post about Generation X. Gen X is set to take over. Know their tendencies, likes, dislikes, whatever.
Second, these people may be retiring from their careers, but some (actually, I think most… and so does CNN) will move on to an every-day job… either by necessity to pay the bills, by choice to fill the time, or to fulfill their lifelong dream of starting a business. You should see a boom in the following industries due to retired Boomers:
- Senior job placement and training services. To help them find a job they’ll be happy with.
- Volunteer and non-profit (especially the Peace Corps). Now that they have the time, many will volunteer it.
- Consultants. Many of these seniors will become consultants for the very field they retired from.
- Temp Agencies. Many people turn to them, and Boomers like them because it’s most likely how they started.
- Houseboats. Both sales and rentals. Boomers love them and can now actually spend time in them.
- RV’s. Oh this will be big. You heard it here first: I don’t care about the gas crisis, Boomers LOVE their RV’s. Boomers love to travel, and they’ll do it in an RV.
Third, Boomers are going to want to live in their dream home. The key is WHERE their dream home is located. Like I said: they love to travel, so Boomers have timeshares, second homes and favorite vacation spots all across the U.S. These are the places they will want to move to. So where are these?
In no particular order:
- Flagstaff, AZ
- Tucson, AZ
- Sedona, AZ
- Palm Springs, CA
- San Diego, CA
- Lake Tahoe, CA
- Aspen, CO
- Boulder, CO
- Tampa, FL
- Port St. Lucie, FL
- Sarasota, FL
- Key West, FL
- Orlando, FL
- Boca Raton, FL
- Fort Myers, FL
- Cape Cod, MA
- Santa Fe, NM
- Las Vegas, NV
- Reno, NV
- Myrtle Beach, SC
- Hilton Head Island, SC
- U.S. Virgin Islands
- Anywhere Hawaii
- OK, anywhere Florida
- The Caribbean
Boomers already own timeshares or second homes in these cities. I feel there will be a significant surge in population in most, if not all, of these cities/places over the next couple years as the Boomers move in permanently. They are already familiar with them and will want to spend their remaining days, and money, in the place that most makes them happy. Expect healthy real estate markets in these cities.
I’m sure there are plenty more trends as 78 million people are bound to produce many. Are there any you can see the Boomers setting off?
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Observing The Presidential Candidates Reveals The Next Green Trend
As painful as it may be, following politics can aid you in discovering trends. Politicians help form our future, and knowing their tendencies and beliefs can help you predict that future.
Back in June, I wrote about how both presidential candidates support stem cell research, all but guaranteeing a boom in popularity of the controversial research. There is another trend that they both support: carbon/emission caps.
Carbon caps allow for what is called emissions trading: the trading of carbon credits. Much of the developed world already does this. The U.S. does not.
Yet.
Since our next president will be either McCain or Obama, the likelihood of this happening in the U.S. is quite high. We may even join the Kyoto Protocol.
This niche is loaded with keywords, mostly centered around the word ‘carbon.’ It’s only a matter of time before these words become everyday vocabulary in the U.S.:
- Emissions Trading
- Carbon Trading
- Carbon Footprint
- Carbon Credit
- Carbon Project
- Carbon Finance
- Carbon Offsetting
- Carbon Tax
- Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
- Certified Emissions Reductions (CER)
Carbon Credit is the term that I think will hit the biggest.
To put it quite short and simple: companies are allotted a certain amount of carbon emissions; let’s say 100 carbon credits to make this example easy. If Comcast “uses up” only 78 of those 100 carbon credits, they can “sell off” the remaining 22. Now if Exxon uses 114 carbon credits, they will be penalized/taxed for going over the 100 limit. However, they can avoid the penalty by purchasing carbon credits from Comcast to bring their total back down to 100.
The idea is to encourage companies to improve their carbon footprint and make money by selling off those surplus carbon credits.
Like I said, other countries already do this. But like anything else, once it hits the States, it will be huge.
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If Oil Bubble Bursts, What Will Speculators Move On To?
Oil prices have been on a small, but steady, decline. The bubble is showing signs that it’s about to burst, as reported by Time, the Associated Press, The Telegraph, Charles Schwab and many others. Whether it’s sooner or later, it’s only a matter of time that it does.
Speculators are often credited with the oil bubble. That may be arguable, but the very definition of an economic bubble indicates that it’s at least partially true.
This morning there was an interesting article on NPR about speculators. I don’t recall who the specialist was that they interviewed (and I can’t find the article on the net to reference), but he directly credited the speculators with the oil bubble. The interesting part was that he wasn’t slamming them for doing so. He believes speculators help carve our future, that THEY have the money and are willing to take higher risks. So they pump their money into high risk technology, thus accelerating progress.
So if the bubble bursts, where will the speculators go to speculate? Well, you can make money on the bursts with shortselling. But not everyone does that. People will look for new trends to pour their money into.
So where will people speculate?
Alternative energy.
Yes, this isn’t news. Alternative energy has been in the mainstream for quite some time, and especially so in the past couple years.
Peanuts. It’s all peanuts.
The speculators are going to flee from oil and dump all their money into alternative energy of all kinds. And if/when they do, it can cause what will potentially be one of the biggest technological explosions in history.
This will help push the technologies, such as nuclear power, along at a much higher pace. Alternative energy, such as personal solar power, is just now becoming affordable; and it will be accelerated even moreso if/when speculators start dumping money into the technology.
The concern is that this will make alternative energy the next bubble. Some are even saying that there are signs of it bubbling already.
I’m not an economist. And I’m certainly not a managing partner of a consulting firm. But the actual need for alternative energy is so great that I just don’t see it bubbling anytime soon. And I’m not just talking the U.S., this need is for the entire world. But whether or not alternative energy bubbles or not is not the point of this article. The point is that it will be even bigger than we imagined.
If you’re not already investing in alternative energy related domains, you should strongly reconsider your strategy.
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Your Macs, iPods And iPhones Are Now Being Targeted
11 posts on the front page of Domaining.com are reporting the sale of Property.com.
Not here! I have a Mac trend instead!
One of the main draws for Macs is the sense of security that you have in that malware is designed for Windows. Combine that with the halo effect (iPod, iPhone) and you have about 8% of computer users on macs.
And they’re just going on with their malware-free happy lives.
Not so fast.
You see, these people who were fed up with the viruses and spyware on their PCs moved on to Macs. Only… it was their OWN computing habits that got them the malware. It was their downloading of p0rn and pirated software. It was their not having a firewall or anti-virus software. It was their not running anti-malware or anti-spyware software. It was their own fault for not taking preventative action and being reckless of the tubes.
Virus programmers realize this and are starting to target Macs because the users are easy victims. For example, a Mac trojan came out in June and is capable of doing everything a PC trojan can do, such as stealing passwords and opening firewalls. So are the Mac’s OS’s really more secure than Windows? Or is it that no one really paid attention until fairly recently?
So here we are in the third week of July and Apple STILL has not fixed the security issue.
But that’s not all! Your iPods and iPhones are vulnerable too! With the ever increasing popularity of these two gadgets, the probability of malware grows higher.
Don’t worry though, just visit your favorite Mac site that focuses on security issues like malware. Oh noes!! Where the hell are you going to find one?
There’s your opportunity.
With Macs being targeted and the vulnerabilities of the iPod and iPhone, now is the time to prepare for it. Sites will need to be built to provide Mac users with the proper downloads and content on how to protect themselves from malware.
You can build them yourself, or sell them some domain names.
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CNN Money’s Top 100 Places To Live And Why Dickinson.com Sucks As A Geodomain
CNN Money has posted their top 100 best places to live in the U.S. This is an indispensable article for the geodomainer. Not only is it a wealth of information, CNN Money exposes and reinforces the trends to make them stronger.
How do they decide what the best places are? Affordable housing, leisure activities, cultural options, job growth, crime rate, sunniness and health care among others. A good set of qualities to judge a city on. Perhaps not perfect- I’m a stormy weather kind of fella, not sunny- but I think it’s in line with the common perception.
Lets take the top city: Middleton, Wisconsin. Obviously they’re doing something right to place at the top of the list. Even so, now that CNN Money has labeled them the best place to live, you can bet everything on their tourism and real estate industries increasing… by a lot. If you lived near the top city, wouldn’t you want to check it out if you haven’t already done so? I would.
The absolute best part is that these city’s .coms can most likely be acquired at bargain prices. I’m curious to see how much Dickinson.com will go for at Bido’s auction. One of the selling points I’ve seen for this domain is the size of the city Dickinson, Texas. I work just 10 miles from Dickinson, Texas and can tell you that you do NOT want to use this as a geodomain. The place is a hole. The entire area is a hole. I’ll take any of the below cities over Dickinson.com as a geodomain.
Stick with Dickinson as a surname.
Back to the list! You can sort towns in many different ways here. Want to buy a .com of a city with high household incomes? Not a problem. How about a geodomain that focuses on the health industry? Sort by health care access. This list is great!
Here are some great ways to sort this list:
- Top-earning towns
- Hottest towns
- Priciest homes
- Most singles
- Youngest
- Job growth
- Affordable housing
- Plentiful leisure activities
- Plentiful cultural options
- Sunny weather
- Short commute time
- Good health care access
- Skinniest
- Clean Air
And, here are the top 10 places to live in the U.S.:
- Middleton, Wisconsin
- Hanover, New Hampshire
- Louisville, Colorado
- Lake Mary, Florida
- Claremont, California
- Papillion, Nebraska
- Milton, Massachusetts
- Chaska, Minnesota
- Nether Providence, Pennsylvania
- Suwanee, Georgia
Want a geodomain that would be great for a social network for singles?
- State College, Pennsylvania
- Durham, New Hampshire
- Amherst Center, Massachusetts
- Storrs, Connecticut
- Oxford, Ohio
- Stanford, California
- East Lansing, Michigan
- Indiana, Pennsylvania
- Blacksburg, Virginia
- Geneseo, New York
Notice something? They’re all college towns. Stanford, Miami U, UConn, Penn State and Michigan State are great schools and would be perfect to focus a geodomain on.
If you’re a geodomainer, this is a great tool for informing yourself before you buy. Boomark it!
EDIT:
This is the 2007 list. You can find the 2008 list here. And here is the post explaining my blunder.
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