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The Baby Boomers are passing $30Trillion in Wealth to the next generation. Will that impact our world? Today we explore how it may already be happening.

Transcript

Today in health, it the largest transfer of wealth in history. My name is Phil Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health, a set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current. And engaged. We want to thank our show sponsor shore investing in developing the next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site.

Nuance Canaan, medical and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Alright, I'm going to hit an article and it's an oldie, but a goodie and it comes from 2019. Now you might be asking yourself, why are you reading an article for 2019? It's because there's a question that's been floating around amongst my peer group.

And we've been talking about why it's so hard to find employees. The answer alludes us. We can't figure it out. It's like, okay. Why are people all of a sudden unavailable? Is it that all of a sudden, so many people are retiring? Is it all of a sudden, so many people are leaving the workforce and how are they leaving the workforce without money? And what's going on?

And so we've started having these conversations. This is kind of things. , my degrees in economics. I have a couple of friends whose degrees in economics, my side of his degrees in economics. And so we have these conversations from time to time. And we ended up on this article. And there's been versions of this article written going back the better part of 10 to 12 years.

And this one I found in Forbes and the title is the greatest wealth transfer in history. What's happening in what are the implications? Let me give you some excerpts. Over the next two decades, the United States will experience an unprecedented shift in demographics and finances that will likely be felt.

Bye every American baby boomers, the generation of people born between 1944 and 64 are expected to transfer $30 trillion in wealth to younger generations. Over the next many years, the jaw-dropping amount has led many journalists and financial experts to refer. To the gradual event as the great wealth transfer.

In no prior time in the history of America has such a vast amount of wealth moved through the hands of generations

as the baby boomer name suggests this generation represented a sudden growth in population post-World war II. After decades of prosperity and economic growth, the generation amass, significant financial wealth and control roughly 70% of all disposable income, according to a 2015 report by us news and world report. So when this $30 trillion starts to change hands, what will this mean for everyone else? The answer is complex and it is complex.

And it will be different depending on who you are and how much of that money is controlled by you, your parents, your grandparents. Still the effects will be far reaching and will create opportunities for everyone. Experts are conflicted about where large sums may end up once it's in the hands of heirs and beneficiaries, because it will largely be influenced by the conditions of the stock market at the time and whatnot. And this article goes on to talk about where people are going to invest in those kinds of things.

Which is not really what I want to talk about. So, , I'm going to go down to the bottom of this article and then pivot a little bit. So the bottom of the circle, it says

much of this wealth will be spent on a wide array of things, including vacations, leisure activities, daily expenses, medical bills. And health services. As you think through this, how the satanic shift of capital may or may not impact you consider what additional or non-obvious opportunities it may create for you think about all the new career opportunities, investment approaches, so forth and so on. And so that's how the article and.

And if you remember, I started started this conversation by talking about where have all the employees go gone. Why can we not find employees? And I, we started having this conversation about this transfer of wealth. And what I'd been ended up taking the group over to was a discussion about the numbers, just the sheer number. So we thought this was going to happen over two decades, that we're going to have this transfer of wealth. And then, ,

I'm looking at the COVID deaths. May 25th, 2022 COVID deaths. In the U S exceeds a million million 925. Of that million 925, as you would imagine. , 257,000 or 35 years or older, 258,000 or 75 to 84, 200 30,000 or 65 to 74 and 50 to 64 is 187. It is a majority of that million number. And so I think what we just saw happen.

Is we just saw that wealth transfer accelerated. And what you're having is you're having potentially dual-income families say, Hey, you know what? We just got this check. We have more money than we've ever had before we have more savings than we've ever had before. , one of us doesn't need to work.

Or we can live anywhere . And I think that has led to, , once. Dual income families becoming a single income families. In some cases you have people walking away from jobs. That they didn't enjoy because they now have money and they now have time to process what they want to do. You could potentially have people starting new.

, entrepreneurial ventures who have money they didn't have before you can have people just leaving the workforce altogether or taking their time or taking a, a gap year. In their career and those kinds of things. So, you know, why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because these kinds of trends impact us. They impact us in health care. They impact us in health. It.

And we are in right now, to be honest with you, I'm doing an awful lot looking at the economy moving forward. Cause I'm making our business plans. For the next three to five years. And I'm trying to determine where the economy is going to go. And as you know, Elon Musk said he has a bad feeling about this economy. We have others.

Who are stating they're going to be doing. , some reductions and those kinds of things. We've talked about, some of the negative numbers that we've seen in the healthcare industry. And whatnot. And I'm trying to determine what that looks like. Now, why is that a good exercise? It's a good exercise for any business owner to do for obvious reasons. When you're doing planning, you're trying to determine to hire or to hold back or to look at your cashflow and conserve cash. And those kinds of things. I talked to someone who invests in healthcare companies today, and he said they have been, , talking to their portfolio companies about conserving cash.

And really identifying, more strategic spend on that money. And Cassius king in a down economy. And, that's important, but if you're in a healthcare role at a healthcare organization in health, it. What does this mean? And likely what it means is a, it seems like healthcare would be kind of recession proof and it is, and it isn't because people will stop doing elective procedures. , because they don't have the money in a down economy.

That's one of the things that happens in healthcare, in a data economy and something you have to keep an eye on.

Decreasing volumes impact the overall budgets. The overall budgets go down. Impacts the number of projects you can do in it. And the types of projects you're going to do in it. It also increases the scrutiny on the investment in projects. In it,

so what's my, so what on this macro trends matter and just keep an eye on those macro trends.

And there are a couple of macro trends at play here. But the biggest one we're talking about right here right now is staffing. He, and from a staffing standpoint, you have a significant portion of the population that is moving out of the workforce. And as they move out of the workforce, we need to look for solutions.

To address that we will need to look at automation, automation in it, automation in administrative tasks. And automation in clinical tasks.

I keep coming back to this because I think there are some that believe that this is a short term problem that will take care of itself naturally over time. And I think we have crossed. The precipice into a new era, a new era where it is going to be hard. To find the right staff and you're going to have to create plans.

For, , bringing people in, train them up to do the jobs that you need them to do. And you may want to consider also what it looks like for your organization to be a constant education source, a constant training center for new staff and new employees. So I look at this, this macro trend in two ways, I look at one in terms of automation. I look at it another in terms of when we do bring people in the people that are available, how are we going to make them effective in our organization?

Anyway, this is just something I've been discussing with my friends. Thought I would throw it out there for the community. It's just a premise. And the premise is that people are leaving the workforce and they may not be coming back and if they don't come back we have to prepare for that inevitability

all right. That's all for today. If you know somebody that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com or wherever you listen to podcasts, apple, Google, overcast, Spotify, Stitcher.

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