Boomers can expect "better financial circumstances in retirement" than their parents are experiencing. As long as real wages keep growing, "the incomes of most baby boomers in retirement are still likely to exceed those of their parents by quite a large margin," the report said.
According to the report, the median boomer household in 1989, with a head of household between 35 and 44, could match the wealth of its parents' generation at retirement age by saving $300 a year for 20 years. The younger boomer household would need to save $1,700 a year for 30 years.
The compounding effect of the long-term savings would generate the money needed to give the boomers the same buying power of their parents who were 55 to 64 in 1989.
However, whether that kind of buying power will satisfy the baby boom generation is not clear, given its propensity for more expensive vacations, bigger homes and an array of other material goods their parents never dreamed of.
Wall Street brokerage firms and other studies have been warning that boomers will be woefully short of cash to maintain their current lifestyles in retirement.
But the report suggested that these alarmist predictions assume that boomers want to keep the same level of spending and consuming in retirement as they had throughout their working lives.
"Yet many retirees derive a great deal of pleasure from having more leisure time, perhaps reducing their consumption of expensive vacations and restaurant meals as a result," the report noted.
