Baby boomers are a very creative people.  But so often the demands of career and raising a family leave little time for creativity in your middle age years.  But as more baby boomers complete their years of service in their careers and move toward retirement, they have plenty of energy and creativity left for a new passion in life, one that expresses all that creativity of their youth.

This is one reason we have seen such an explosion of craft fairs in the country, which provide an outlet for all of that creative talent baby boomers are expressing through their arts and craft.  The great thing about crafts shows is you can start wherever you are in your creative arts and continue to grow and become more skilled each passing year.  To get started, you should take on this new hobby and small business with the same enthusiasm and passion you did when you were employed in your former career.  That is the great thing about baby boomers having this kind of free time in the retirement years.  There is so much talent and energy available that to not make it available to the public would be a crime.

It is going to take some preparation to get ready for your first craft fair.   The preparation will be on three fronts.  One is making contacts with the organizers of upcoming fairs and getting on the schedule to be able to display a booth there.  The easiest way to find out how to do that is attend the new craft fair that comes up in the area.  They are often associated with special events such as Oktoberfest or a food or music festival.  By attending several as you are in your preparation period, you can accomplish several good things.

.       You can look at booths of many different vendors to get ideas for your booth when you are ready to take the plunge.

.       You can talk to vendors who are selling there and learn about how to go about getting on the program for this fair and to learn about upcoming events you can participate in.  Don't worry about you seeming to pose a threat as a future competition for sales.  There is a camaraderie among crafters and you will enjoy the social aspect of mixing with other creative people.

.       You can talk to the people who organize the show and get a feel for how you will fit in to their next event.

Another line of preparation is booth creation.  It's good if you are starting early because it will take some time and a bit of expense to get the materials together and for you to build the skills to put the booth up, take it down, move it and store it between shows.   Again, your contacts with experienced craft show veterans will be invaluable for this.

Finally, but this is the most important part of your preparations is your talent and craft that you will be preparing to sell at the craft shows. You can purchase some examples of similar crafts you see doing well at the fairs you scout out.  These can be templates for what you want to do.  But you will impose your own creative vision on the craft so what you offer when you finally get to the craft faire will be uniquely yours and speak of your vision.

Along with these preparations, think about how you will customize your booth to draw customers in.  From craft fairs you have attended in the past and the ones you scout, you will witness that there are certain booths that draw crowds and others that just don't seem to get the customers.  So you want to make your booth inviting to customers so you will reap a good return on your effort in the form of sales.

There are a variety of ways to draw customers.  From candles, to contests, to videos playing, to using music or live talent to making your craft as people watch, there are many ways you can experiment around with to draw customers.  You will get a unique thrill from the sales you make each day.  But more importantly, you will be expressing that creative side of you and getting that fulfillment that you had to wait to this phase of life to express.  And that's a wonderful benefit of learning to sell your crafts at craft fairs.

If there ever was a baby boomer "issue" that has become engrained into the heart and psyche of a generation, it is an aversion to war due to the horrific experience if Vietnam.  While a relatively small percentage of surviving baby boomers actually went to and fought in Vietnam, the scar on the national psyche was so deep that it has influenced the way baby boomers have thought about war and how they selected their government representatives for over 30 years.

This is in stark contrast to the way the parents of the Baby Boom generation viewed warfare and the use of the country's military might.  Because World War II was such a necessary conflict and winning it would be the difference between a world of freedom or domination by a cruel dictator, that fight had nobility and a clear-cut purpose to it.  So when we, as Americans, banded together to defeat Nazi Germany and her allies, it was an act of world changing sacrifice and nobility that shaped that generation.  To the parents of baby boomers, warfare in a noble cause was the highest calling of a nation and part of our national pride.

Everything about Vietnam was contrary to that vision.  The mission was unclear and the military was not empowered to win decisively as they were in World War II.  Some saw Vietnam as a puppet war in several respects.  In one way it was a puppet war because the real enemy in Vietnam was not the North Vietnamese but China and Russia were using that conflict, and the Vietcong as puppets to lure the American military into a no win situation and deplete our resources and our will to fight.

Others viewed Vietnam as a puppet conflict to benefit the American military and business interests who were profiting from the conflict.  While this is a cynical and harsh way to view a conflict, the distrust of the "military/industrial complex" was prevalent in the minds of a youthful baby boomer generation who saw their brothers and cousins go off to a brutal war, which, in their minds, was being conducted to benefit business.  Small wonder that many came out of this era bitter and resentful of big business interests.  That distrust has surfaced many times over the years and it dominates discussions of modern conflicts America is involved with.

But there has been good come out of the national aversion to war that was the product of the Vietnam conflict.  The anti war movement did not result in the reduction in our commitment to a strong military and the America's military continues to be the strongest on earth.  In fact, some of the ways the military has served the country in situations that were not warlike such as hurricane relief etc. has reinforced that the military as an institution is a necessary and honorable part of our society.

Moreover, the way wars since Vietnam have been conducted have shown, in many cases, that an intelligent approach to conflict will result in the wise use of our military.  The current problematic conflict tends to overshadow that since Vietnam, our presidents have used the military with skill and intelligence that reflects the insistence of the baby boom generation that we don't just be the strongest military power, we also have to be the wisest.  The way small conflicts like the Balkans and the first Gulf War were conducted reflect a new strategy that avoids the tragic mistakes of Vietnam and uses our military to win decisively and quickly.

Each new conflict gives the baby boomer generation and indeed all generations before and after the chance to redefine what military superiority really means.  And whatever political viewpoint we might have, it can be said that if Vietnam caused the baby boomer generation to become more reflective and call upon political leadership to show accountability and responsibility in the use of our military might, that is a good outcome of what otherwise was a very bad war.

There is a certain romance to trading on the stock market.  Wall Street and all the drama of what goes on there seems exciting and a place where millionaires are made in a day.  Fortunately, for most of us, Wall Street is a far away place and we would be too intimidated to actually try to trade in that complex environment.  If you get a chance to visit and watch the frantic trading floor in action, that's plenty.

Baby boomers are notoriously self-confident and have a generational attitude of, "If someone can do it, so can I."  When this attitude is brought to investing, that can set up a dangerous situation for the baby boomer from a financial perspective.  The explosion of the Internet, which has put virtually every kind of transaction at our fingertips, has spawned this new phenomenon of "Online Trading."  In theory, any baby boomer could sit down with their retirement money and with a few clicks on their favorite stock investment web site, make a fortune over night.

Well, at least that is the allure of online trading.  There are some very good things about the movement that has been afoot in the last few years to put your financial world at your fingertips on the Internet.  Some of those advantages are.

.       You can stay in touch with your bank balances and your investments on a daily or even hourly basis by having updates delivered right to your desktop.  This is unprecedented access to your own money.  It can be a blessing because it raises your awareness of your investments or a curse because it makes you less tolerant and willing to "ride out" market fulgurations.

.       Online trading services have reduced broker's fees by putting the power to invest in the market right at your fingertips.  But by taking the brokers out of the loop somewhat, you also lose their valuable expertise and advice to keep you from making disastrous mistakes.

.       Online trading has made management of your financial picture part of your online entertainment.  But it also could lead to becoming obsessed with investing rather than putting your money in a solid long-term plan and moving on with your life.

.       The sudden interest in online trading has made more people knowledgeable about the stock market and what their money is doing.  There is no downside to becoming educated about this important part of your financial planning.

But like anything else, particularly when it comes to the Internet, using some common sense is crucial to not letting yourself go crazy with online investing.  Baby boomers, as they move into the retirement years, very often find themselves with some but not enough retirement funding.  So it's easy to see online investing as a way of supplementing that income and retiring in luxury as we all dream to do.

If there was any mantra, we must have about investing, especially if we are using online tools, it is, "Be prudent and be informed."  There is no substitute for getting some education and doing some reading into the mechanics of the stock market and into the strategies that are most likely to be a success for you.  The stock market is no place for "get rich quick" schemes because they are more likely to result in "get poor quick" outcomes. 

But for the smart baby boomer who does his or her homework and knows what they are doing and gets good advice from investment analysts that know the market, online investing can become a good addition to your financial planning arsenal and be a lot of fun for you as well.

As baby boomers are rapidly approach what used to be defined as "retirement age", a big concern often comes up about whether there will be enough retirement savings in place to be able to live a comfortable life later in life.  There have been plenty of rumbles from Washington that the Social Security system will not be able to bear up under the huge demand the boomer generation will put on it.  So few baby boomers are looking to depend on that money being there, even though we are all paying into it every month.

On top of that worry, the method our parents used of working for the same company for 50 years and retiring with a hefty financial package and a gold watch has gone the way of the dinosaurs.  Long ago corporate America began to eliminate retirement packages as a straightforward benefit.  So many baby boomers find themselves approaching retirement age with insufficient retirement monies to support them.  What is needed is a solid plan to attack this problem while boomers still have a good 10 to 15 years of working potential in them.  Some principles of that plan might be.

Simplify Your Life.

When the kids finish college and get out on their own, you may find your life could be simplified considerably.  You might not need as big a house and many of the extras that were important when you raising a family in that house.  Do a thorough review of your assets and your expenses.  You will find you can cut costs significantly and even begin to cash in on some of the extras you have had all these years and put all of those savings into the bank as a hedge for the day when you are ready to retire.

Pack the Bank Account Now.

The empty nest syndrome isn't all-bad.  There are some real benefits to returning to a lifestyle of just you and your spouse discovering life together.  You have conquered many challenges raising a family in this tough world and you deserve to be proud of your life of accomplishment.  But now you and your spouse can take on a big challenge that is just for you which is to get out there and generate income for retirement.

Mom can go back to work and both members of the union can take on as much work as can be found.  Often in the mid to late fifties, the primary breadwinner may be able to retire from that job they have held down for several decades.  But instead of beginning to live off of retirement funds, get another career going that can generate another ten to fifteen years of income.  With good budget management, it's very likely you will be able to bank at least one entire income if not more and put all of that money back into retirement. 

Working with your investment counselors you can find ways to shelter that extra income so it stays out of the tax system until you are ready to use it.  The good news is that this push for productivity and revenue generation late in life can lead to a healthy retirement budget that can benefit you well as you finally sit back to enjoy your leisure years in the rocking chair taking care of the grandkids.

Identify a Money Generator that Can Stay With You

There are second careers that you can find that will become a good source of supplemental revenue even after you retire.  Start now looking for a potential "retirement career" which will be a line of work you can do even after you retire to generate additional income for you.  Writing or Internet work is a good way to set up a home based business that you can continue to work at as long as you can type, see reasonably well and your thinking capacity is sound.

Other examples of retirement careers are part time jobs as apartment managers or care givers, sales jobs in using the expertise from your primary career or jobs that are somewhat non-taxing such as greeting customers at a Wal-Mart or working in a book store.  And these retirement jobs have the double benefit of adding to your revenue resources and keeping you active and enjoying life in your retirement years.  And that is what all of us want.

Marriage is a funny thing.  How you view it is drastically different if you are a teenager or youth with stars in your eyes compared to your vision of marriage when you have been ensconced in the practice for 20-30 years and looking toward a life in retirement as a married couple.  Baby boomers have experienced every aspect of marriage from that early idealistic stage through divorces, various redefinitions of marriage and now taking their marriages into their retirement years.  It may be that this next transition of marriage will bring as many changes to that special relationship as any that has gone before.

How you view marriage as you move toward your retirement years without a doubt depends on how marriage has gone for you over the decades.  If marriages are rocked with difficulty, separations and other woes, retirement can bring a new dimension to that tension.  On the other hand, part of the commission of retirement is to begin to seek resolution of life's struggles so working together with each other in the context of marriage can bring tremendous healing in this phase of life.

Each era of life seems to bring a new opportunity to define marriage and how it will be an important part of life.  When the baby boomer generation became parents, the shift was notable as retailers responded to their emphasis on being good moms and dads and away from youthful issues to some extent.  Then as baby boomers moved through parenting and into the empty nest phase of life, that seemed to bring as many challenges as when that nest filled up with children decades before.

There is no question that real life in the context of a very real and functional marriage, even with the problems that brings is also a huge resource for us throughout life's journey.  While sometimes the romance can escape from the marriage relationship if life brings struggles and as our bodies go through changes, that partnership and intimacy of relationship is an incredible resource for coping with the big changes all baby boomers have had to face over the years.

This is the good thing about hanging in there with that marriage until you get to the stage of life most baby boomers are moving toward in this decade.  The things that can rob a marriage of romance during the working part of your married years are the coming of children, the hard work of raising them, keeping a career moving forward in the tough business settings we have experienced in the last three decades and seeing your own relationship evolve under that kind of "pressure cooker" environment. 

But a significant amount of those pressures begin to lift when you are able to perhaps scale back the work life, enjoy the fruits of your labors and let the kids get out on their own.  So that side of the pre-retirement years can actually be a fertile setting for a new romantic life between husband and wife to spring up.  Many couples, as they leave the world of parenting behind, experience such late in life romantic rebirths.  And this kind of late springtime in your relationship with your long time spouse can bring the birth of new creativity in many parts of your life making it one of the happiest phases of life for you and your husband or wife.

A marriage gets tested throughout youth and middle age and marriages that survive do so because of mutual support and the ability to accept the other member of the marriage and compromise.  Since these traits will be well established in your relationship as you move into your fifties and sixties together, they will be a continuous resource to you as you face retirement issues, dealing with being a grandparent and being wise counsel for children who are facing life's struggles for the first time.

But baby boomers should not be surprised if they see their marriages continue to change, grow and mature in new directions as each partner explores this phase of life for the first time as well.  A marriage is a living thing so we can take joy from seeing it become something new each new decade as, as we have done often in the past, we start defining marriage all over again.

A lot of baby boomers would like to forget that one of the watershed movements that defined the personality of this generation was the time frame dominated by, for lack of a better word, hippies.  That term that seems somewhat quaint and antiquated now had a tremendous power in the mid to late sixties when it carried with it the impact of tremendous social change as well as a massive shift in public morality and consciousness.  So while this is often a time of a bit of embarrassment for the baby boomer generation, it is also a formative part of their history and it deserves respect for that reason.

To be fair, not all baby boomers were hippies.  As is often the case, the hippie movement was something that got tremendous media coverage but it represented only a small portion of the baby boomer population at the time.  By percentage, very few of that age group actually joined the "tune in, drop out, turn on" society of the hippies.  But because hippies were a colorful, eccentric, flamboyant and sinful crowd, they titillated the public interest any time there was a public spectacle brought on by hippie gathering.

But despite being few in number, the hippie culture did send waves of change into the society at the time.  Part of that was because there was a general discontent with the Vietnam War.  So when the hippie movement became linked with the antiwar movement, they blended to where there was virtually no distinction.  Add to that big changes in youth culture brought on by the explosion of new musical styles and changes in lifestyle and worldview that the new cultural leaders in the rock music world promoted and you have a formula for the hippie movement becoming a watershed shift of social values in a generation.

Rather than just look back on the hippies with mild amusement and a little disgust, it may be best to review this important part of our past and notice the good this part of our history left for the boomer generation to carry forward.  While on the surface we associate hippies with drug use and free love (e.g. sex), the actual movement itself was grounded in tremendous sense of value, morality and social responsibility. 

The youth movement at the time held a mirror up to society and demanded we look. Moreover, for the first time ever, it held public figures accountable for actions that were taken that harmed the public good.  This was revolutionary to be sure and it has made the public more demanding and scrutinizing of the government ever since.  And that is a good thing.

There was a strong thread of ethics and philosophy in the hippie social system that, while different from what America and the world was used to, be grounded in a fierce devotion to right and wrong in the hippie or counterculture movements.  Along with a strong commitment to the values of that society, hippies and associated societies were fearless and uncompromising in their willingness to put themselves on the line to see their values translate into public policy.  This was an element of the hippie subculture that made it so explosive.  Because the youth movement was so willing to demonstrate and make grand and flamboyant public statements to emphasize their political, ethical or moral outrage, things changed in a way that the country had never seen before. 

The counter culture of the sixties literally put the power for change back into the hands of the people.  And that is in step with what the founding fathers wanted for America and something we can be thankful to the hippie movement for giving back to our society. 

Baby boomers may not have a corner on the market for an urgent desire to stay youthful but they certainly have set a high standard for creating a virtual avalanche of products and services to attend to that need.  The quest to look young in baby boomers has resulted in an explosion of profits in the cosmetic and plastic surgery markets.  It's easy to criticize the desire of baby boomers to want to see them as youthful as simple vanity.  But it goes a lot deeper than that.

It doesn't take a lot of research or analysis to see that baby boomers grounded their identities in the youth movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  Before the boomer generation erupted like a generational volcano, there really was no youth movement.  But in the 1960s, when youth culture virtually took over American and indeed world culture, everything changed for baby boomers and that change was never really reversed. 

The culture of that time that now seems very long ago was one of the adoration of youth.  That desire to put age on a pedestal and worship everything about being young has permeated the culture even as the boomer generation moved into middle age and now is on the verge of creating the largest retirement generation ever. 

Not all of the youth worship that is easy to document in baby boomers is just about looking sexy and dreading the physical changes of growing older.  Some of what boomer's love about the concept of youth has to do with the idealism and the commitment to causes that is common in young people.  The desire to change the world and to be a force to make mankind better was part of what made the new youth culture in the 1960s so unique.  And because those values are laudable, we really can't completely condemn the desire by baby boomers to stay youthful.

So the quest to stay young often manifests itself in cosmetic attempts to look young.  You can almost understand the appeal.  We all like to look good.  But the real source of youth is not a tight butt and abs and smooth, wrinkle free skin.  The phrase "you are as young as you feel" is often scoffed at by baby boomers as a cheap cop out.  And it can be used to have an excuse to behave younger than you are and perhaps want to socialize with younger people in an inappropriate way.  But it can also reflect that an inner youthfulness which is fueled by a youthful outlook on life and a basic policy of good health and exercise will keep anyone spy and vital well into their senior years.

It is when baby boomers combine those elements of "inner youthfulness' with their cosmetic efforts to stay young that they really do retain much of their youth beyond what their years would report.   We all have met an elderly man or woman who is so full of life and fun that they leave you feeling older than they are.  The sparkle in the eye, the curiosity about everything life has to offer and that optimism and idealism that you ordinarily associate with teenagers is truly inspiring when a senior citizen is expressing it.

This is the real youth movement that the baby boomer generation is pioneering.  It is more than dying the hair or using Botox and wrinkle creams.  It is about being strong role models to the youth coming up that they don't have to give up on their dreams and that their idealism and excitement in living can thrive no matter what age they are.  And if that is the legacy of the baby boomer generation, it's a fine ethic for them to leave behind for future generations to enjoy.

Meditation became part of the vernacular of lifestyle choices and a source of a lot of conversation as far back as the 60s for baby boomers when there was a big interest in eastern religions and things that were exotic and new.  But while many of the flash in the pan interests in exotic religions during that time frame faded away in the life style of baby boomers, meditation has endured and become a common practice and resource that has benefited this generation in every decade of their lives.

There is a good reason meditation has endured and even grown in popularity far beyond any religious context.  Meditation has tremendous benefits for virtually every aspect of life and those who integrate it into their daily lifestyles can experience those benefits virtually as soon as they start.  You don't have to be a guru at meditation to realize benefits from the very first time to give it a try.  Some of those benefits include.

.       Meditation is calming.  Because the act of meditation calls for you to bring your thoughts into captivity and to still your mind and focus it, that sense of your soul being in turmoil eases and you are able to address the cause of your anxiety and see a solution more clearly because your emotions are not clouding the issue.

.       Meditation helps you focus and concentrate.  The great thing about meditation is that the effects of meditation continue past those few moments when you are meditating.  Those few moments of calm create an atmosphere of focus and clarity of thought that goes on throughout your day helping you focus your mind and more easily concentrate when you need to.

.       Meditation reduces stress and mental anxiety.  So often the stress that comes out of problems and difficulties is dominated by emotional reactions even more than by the problem itself.  Meditation clears away the effects of the stress making it easier for you to solve the problem itself.

.       Meditation helps reduce physical anxiety.  The process of meditation involves extended periods of quiet deep breathing.  This simple action floods the brain with oxygen and energizes blood flow throughout the body which refreshes tired muscles and causes your entire physical system to relax and release pent up anxiety.

.       Meditation helps you sleep and digest your food.  The refreshed blood flow, rich in oxygen that comes from the session of meditation, takes action immediately on the digestive system often reducing or eliminating digestive problems and even easing the symptoms of ulcers.  Because the mind is relaxed and well supplied with vital oxygen and blood flow, sleep comes more easily and is more recuperative.

Some successful role models in all walks of life that come out of the baby boomer generation credit meditation to why they are able to accomplish such great things.  In addition to all of these benefits, meditation is easy to integrate into your lifestyle and you can go at your own pace learning to become better at meditation and grow in your ability to use it.

Meditation is profoundly easy to do.  The image of a meditation practitioner in painful "lotus position" going into a virtual trance is the extreme of the discipline.  Because meditation has been adapted so that any of us can benefit from the health benefits it brings, you can begin meditating immediately and see the benefits from the very first session.

Small wonder many baby boomers have continued down through the decades to be enthusiastic proponents of meditation.  And there is no reason baby boomers cannot continue to enjoy the tremendous benefits as they move into their late middle age and retirement years as well.