Americans 65 and older account for record share of spending and are less susceptible to interest rates
4 min
Why has consumer spending proven so resilient as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates? An important and little-appreciated reason: Consumers are getting older.
In August, 17.7% of the population was 65 or older, according to the Census Bureau, the highest on record going back to 1920 and up sharply from 13% in 2010. The elderly aren’t just more numerous: Their finances are relatively healthy and they have less need to borrow, such as to buy a house, and are less at risk of layoffs than other consumers.
This has made the elderly a spending force to be reckoned with. Americans age 65 and up accounted for 22% of spending last year, the highest share since records began in 1972 and up from 15% in 2010, according to the Labor Department’s survey of consumer expenditures released in September.
“These are the consumers that will matter over the coming year,” said Susan Sterne, chief economist at Economic Analysis Associates.
“Our large share of older consumers provides a consumption base in times like today when job growth slows, interest rates rise and student-debt loan repayments begin again,” she said.
Seniors’ high spending propensities reflect health, wealth and perhaps lingering psychological effects of the pandemic.
“All my life it was, save for this, save for that,” said Maureen Green, 66, of Cape Cod, Mass. “Now there’s money in the bank and I’m spending in ways that bring me closer to friends and family than I did before.”
Green, a real-estate agent with four grown children living across the country, estimated she is spending 25% more and twice as much time traveling now compared with 2019. She recently traveled to Syracuse, N.Y., to catch a photo exhibit with friends, and toured Rhode Island with her son and his girlfriend.
“The one million Americans who didn’t survive Covid—that’s part of it. That taught me not to let time go by because before I know it, that time won’t be there anymore,” she said.
“The lifestyle of the senior has changed dramatically—they’re more active than ever,” said Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser of Circana, a research firm specializing in consumer behavior. That has expanded the menu of recreation on which to spend, he said. “They’re riding e-bikes, they’re hiking, they’re traveling. And they’re doing these things for longer than they’ve ever been done.”
The average household led by someone age 65 and older spent 2.7% more last year than in 2021, adjusted for inflation, according to the Labor Department, compared with 0.7% for under-65 households. Spending by older households is up 34.5% from 1982, compared with 16.5% for younger households.
Comparable data isn’t available for 2023. However, consumers older than 60 reported spending 7.9% more in August than a year earlier, compared with a 5.1% increase among those age 40 to 60 and a 4.6% gain for younger consumers, according to a survey by the New York Fed. The data aren’t adjusted for inflation.
The growing yen to spend by the elderly is amplified by their sheer numbers. The unusually large cohort of baby boomers, the youngest of which are 59, are reaching their retirement years en masse.
American Cruise Lines, which gears its cruises toward older consumers, said it is seeing double-digit sales growth this year, driven largely by boomers. The Guilford, Conn., company this year added three ships to its fleet and expanded its season by a month for some popular routes.
“River cruising has traditionally attracted an older audience, and with more boomers retiring each year, we see both a rapid rate of growth and demand for longer experiences,” said Charles B. Robertson, the company’s president and chief executive.
Another factor in the elderly’s favor: relatively strong finances. Americans age 70 and older now hold nearly 26% of household wealth, the highest since records began in 1989, according to the Federal Reserve.
While economists still see a relatively high probability of recession in the coming year, Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist of Yardeni Research, isn’t one of them. An important reason: By the Fed’s reckoning, baby boomers alone have now amassed $77.1 trillion in wealth. “There’s a $77 trillion-wide hole in the theory that consumers’ running out of pandemic savings will sink the economy,” he said.
They have less consumer debt, minimal student debt and are more likely to own their homes outright. Many of those who have mortgages refinanced at the unprecedented low in mortgage rates after the pandemic hit. They are also less likely to need to move due to an expanding family or a new job than Gen Z and Millennials, shielding them from the impact of rising housing costs.
Retirees also received an 8.7% cost-of-living-adjustment bump to Social Security payments in January, the largest single-year increase since 1981, and an automatic adjustment to offset last year’s 9.1% inflation peak.
These factors have cushioned seniors from the twin scourges of inflation and high interest rates. And since most of them are retired, seniors’ spending is less vulnerable to the rise in unemployment that many economists anticipate in coming quarters.
Subscription demand for the Cincinnati Opera’s summer festival this year was surprisingly strong and driven by older patrons, said Todd Bezold, director of marketing.
“Despite the multiyear trend in subscriptions going down, down, down in every art form, we went up this year—by 3%,” he said. That jump in demand came despite a sharp rise in ticket prices to account for several years of inflation. “The vast majority of our subscribers are baby boomers; we know that much.”
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Selloff in bitcoin and other digital tokens hits crypto-treasury companies.
3 min
The hottest crypto trade has turned cold. Some investors are saying “told you so,” while others are doubling down.
It was the move to make for much of the year: Sell shares or borrow money, then plough the cash into bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies. Investors bid up shares of these “crypto-treasury” companies, seeing them as a way to turbocharge wagers on the volatile crypto market.
Michael Saylor pioneered the move in 2020 when he transformed a tiny software company, then called MicroStrategy , into a bitcoin whale now known as Strategy. But with bitcoin and ether prices now tumbling, so are shares in Strategy and its copycats. Strategy was worth around $128 billion at its peak in July; it is now worth about $70 billion.
The selloff is hitting big-name investors, including Peter Thiel, the famed venture capitalist who has backed multiple crypto-treasury companies, as well as individuals who followed evangelists into these stocks.
Saylor, for his part, has remained characteristically bullish, taking to social media to declare that bitcoin is on sale. Sceptics have been anticipating the pullback, given that crypto treasuries often trade at a premium to the underlying value of the tokens they hold.
“The whole concept makes no sense to me. You are just paying $2 for a one-dollar bill,” said Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets. “Eventually those premiums will compress.”
When they first appeared, crypto-treasury companies also gave institutional investors who previously couldn’t easily access crypto a way to invest. Crypto exchange-traded funds that became available over the past two years now offer the same solution.
BitMine Immersion Technologies , a big ether-treasury company backed by Thiel and run by veteran Wall Street strategist Tom Lee , is down more than 30% over the past month.
ETHZilla , which transformed itself from a biotech company to an ether treasury and counts Thiel as an investor, is down 23% in a month.
Crypto prices rallied for much of the year, driven by the crypto-friendly Trump administration. The frenzy around crypto treasuries further boosted token prices. But the bullish run abruptly ended on Oct. 10, when President Trump’s surprise tariff announcement against China triggered a selloff.
A record-long government shutdown and uncertainty surrounding Federal Reserve monetary policy also have weighed on prices.
Bitcoin prices have fallen 15% in the past month. Strategy is off 26% over that same period, while Matthew Tuttle’s related ETF—MSTU—which aims for a return that is twice that of Strategy, has fallen 50%.
“Digital asset treasury companies are basically leveraged crypto assets, so when crypto falls, they will fall more,” Tuttle said. “Bitcoin has shown that it’s not going anywhere and that you get rewarded for buying the dips.”
At least one big-name investor is adjusting his portfolio after the tumble of these shares. Jim Chanos , who closed his hedge funds in 2023 but still trades his own money and advises clients, had been shorting Strategy and buying bitcoin, arguing that it made little sense for investors to pay up for Saylor’s company when they can buy bitcoin on their own. On Friday, he told clients it was time to unwind that trade.
Crypto-treasury stocks remain overpriced, he said in an interview on Sunday, partly because their shares retain a higher value than the crypto these companies hold, but the levels are no longer exorbitant. “The thesis has largely played out,” he wrote to clients.
Many of the companies that raised cash to buy cryptocurrencies are unlikely to face short-term crises as long as their crypto holdings retain value. Some have raised so much money that they are still sitting on a lot of cash they can use to buy crypto at lower prices or even acquire rivals.
But companies facing losses will find it challenging to sell new shares to buy more cryptocurrencies, analysts say, potentially putting pressure on crypto prices while raising questions about the business models of these companies.
“A lot of them are stuck,” said Matt Cole, the chief executive officer of Strive, a bitcoin-treasury company. Strive raised money earlier this year to buy bitcoin at an average price more than 10% above its current level.
Strive’s shares have tumbled 28% in the past month. He said Strive is well-positioned to “ride out the volatility” because it recently raised money with preferred shares instead of debt.
Cole Grinde, a 29-year-old investor in Seattle, purchased about $100,000 worth of BitMine at about $45 a share when it started stockpiling ether earlier this year. He has lost about $10,000 on the investment so far.
Nonetheless, Grinde, a beverage-industry salesman, says he’s increasing his stake. He sells BitMine options to help offset losses. He attributes his conviction in the company to the growing popularity of the Ethereum blockchain—the network that issues the ether token—and Lee’s influence.
“I think his network and his pizzazz have helped the stock skyrocket since he took over,” he said of Lee, who spent 15 years at JPMorgan Chase, is a managing partner at Fundstrat Global Advisors and a frequent business-television commentator.
