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So which is it? Is it a Silver Tsunami of retirement of Baby Boomers OR is it just a wave? Well, The recent report on BusinessWeekOnline attempts to address this question and tries to bust the myth supposedly common among many.

Did you know that even after the youngest Boomer reaches retirement age, the total number of Boomers retiring would not be 78 million, but more like a 46 million when adjusted for people that never worked and other factors? 

Read the article (watch the video interview) on BusinessWeek Online.

There have been numerous mentions, analyses of this interview in the blogosphere. I will only reference just a couple here.

The ‘50 + Digital’ posted the following in their blog. In this blog, Mark correctly points out that the real issue is not who is retired or not (although this is the real issue for those businesses spending big time banking on the upcoming wave of retirees), but it is the impending aging and the resulting health and other issues that eventually crop up.

Also, part of the reason many aren’t retiring is because of the lack of savings in their retirement accounts. One can not afford to retire on a $50,000 or $70,000 balance in their retirement accounts, unless they can count on a nice pension check or some other source of income. Believe it or not, this will affect the Gen X generation even more so than the Baby Boomers. But many years from now. This is so because, by the time Gen X’ers retire, pensions would have more or less disappeared and they can’t really count on Social Security benefits. So they have to basically pay for their retirement from their own savings. And as we all know, as Americans our saving habits are not very impressive. So one choice to afford the extended years of living is to not retire.

My dear friend and Boomer411 co-founder, Raj Setty has this great blog post on this subject. Regardless of how close or far you are from retiring, answering these questions that Raj asks in his blog can work as a checkpoint for your retirement preparedness…

1. When do you plan to retire?

2. How much money should you have to make this dream a reality?

3. How much money should you earn this year to reach the goal outlined in #2?

It takes some financial discipline to reasonably answer question #2 above. It helps to know how much you are spending on a monthly basis and which of these expenses you expect will continue into your retirement. Also, it is important to note that upon retirement one has more time to spare and might want to travel around or get involved in some other activities. Each of these cost a lot of money and these expenses need to be planned as well. Not to mention that the cost of healthcare increases drastically with one’s age. So take a deep breath and face up the facts. May be you are well prepared or may be you are not. But this is your life. So wouldn’t you rather make a well-educated move than a hasty one?

For more on this subject, read our interview with Catherine Kitcho, author of the book, ‘Happy About Being a Baby Boomer: Facing Our Newfound Longevity’. You might want to buy her book for more help on figuring out how much money do you really need to retire and live well.