Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990 TAG: 9003082010
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By HANK EZELL COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Ellis and her peers are that fast-growing class of elderly Americans who - for one thing - need specialized services and who - for a clincher - have the money to pay for them.
A retiree from the federal government, Ellis pays Virginia Vickery of Vickery & Associates in Atlanta an hourly consulting fee to balance her checkbook, advise her on selling her house and otherwise guide her monetary affairs.
"You name it and she does it," said Ellis, a widow. "It just makes me feel so much more secure."
Vickery, the founder and only full-timer in her year-old business, makes $50 to $75 an hour doing that sort of work for people whose advanced years have made them dependent on some degree of outside support.
Hers is one of a growing number of small businesses that are making some green out of the much-discussed graying of America.
Lawyers define their part of the elderly marketplace as "wills, trusts and estates." John Arthur Nix said he adds 250 clients a year to his Atlanta law practice. He makes house calls and even hospital calls. "You have to make it convenient for people who need your services, and that's basically older people," he said.
Many companies now provide home delivery of necessities - goods, such as groceries and medicine, and services, such as bookkeeping, law and medical treatment. Vickery, trained as an accountant and lawyer, has also served as legs for a client now confined to a nursing home. She once bought a pair of pants for him at JC Penney, and she took his glasses to an optician to be repaired. "These are things that become very traumatic if you don't have family around," Vickery said. "How are you going to get them done?"
For those who still maintain their own homes, there are remodeling companies that specialize in installing easy-to-reach shelves and accessible bathing and toilet facilities. There are companies that take care of household chores, like cleaning gutters, or windows, or whole houses.
There are consultants in a field called care management. Such people specialize in finding out what an elderly person's needs are, and in finding the professionals, delivery people and sundry caretakers who will satisfy those needs.
A variety of physical, mental and emotional problems come into play. Vickery got her start when her father's blindness made him incapable of writing checks. Some potential clients have short-term memory loss, or simply worry about it.
"Even without dementia, there is a feeling of maybe not being quite as sure of things as when you were 65," Vickery said. "By the time you're 85, you're a bit more nervous about whether you've written your check quite right, or whether you wrote all the checks you intended to."
One of her clients, a widow of 20 years who has for many years managed her own affairs but who now transposes numbers in her checks and checkbook, hires Vickery to correct and balance the checkbook once a month. "What she really wants to know most of all is how much money she has in the bank, to the penny," Vickery said. "She really doesn't want her family to know how much she's got."
That attitude results not from bad blood among her relatives but from an urge to be independent, Vickery added. As long as she can keep her checkbook, the woman feels she has retained control of her life.
A yearning for the past, and for civility, also creates a marketplace for service-oriented businesses.
"Older people have been around the block," said 52-year-old Treesa Drury, an executive with the American Association of Retired Persons' magazine, Modern Maturity. "We remember things, and one of the things we remember is service. One of the things people really miss is being treated like a customer. A lot of that is missing, and it is a place where small business can make a difference."
The gray market itself can make a difference for business. It is getting bigger: 25.7 million Americans were 65 or older in 1980, and the total is expected to grow to 31 million in 1990 and 34.9 million in the year 2000.
It also is better supplied with spending money. In years past, old age was when just about everybody had to scrimp by on a pension and the loving support of grown children. But by 1986, 6.2 million U.S. households headed by persons 60 or older had discretionary income - money to burn after the taxes and the rent and the groceries were paid for.
That 6.2 million was nearly a fourth of all households that had extra cash to spend. And those oldsters had more extra money: $6,280 average per person for those in their late 60s, compared with $4,572 for those in their late 40s.
"The basic theme is that they have a lot of money," said Jean Van Ryzen, editor of the Maryland-based Selling to Seniors newsletter.
Those numbers could become even more impressive in the future, as the baby boomers reach their retirement years. "That will definitely change things," Drury said.
But she and others worry that the business world may overestimate the elderly marketplace, or oversimplify it.
Modern Maturity magazine, for example, sets limits on the amount of advertising it accepts concerning products for those with health problems.
George Moschis, director of Georgia State University's Center for Mature Consumer Studies, warned that numbers alone don't translate into demand for products or services. "For small businesses, I think there are opportunities," he said. "Those that position themselves early will benefit from it.
"But you have to be very careful not to jump to conclusions," Moschis added. "We think older people have all kinds of money available. Maybe they do, but maybe that's because they don't have as many needs to satisfy. And maybe they're saving it against a rainy day." That is a real possibility, he said, because people are retiring earlier, living longer, and thinking about financing a longer retirement.
by CNB