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I see an emerging Canadian real estate trend mirroring that of the U.S. – millennials and seniors, the most unlikely roommates, are now increasingly sharing a home together. The Globe and Mail recently reported that with the rise of Canada’s rents while the vacancy rate shrinks, a growing number of seniors are living in homes too big, while young Canadians squeeze into apartments too expensive. The concept of home sharing – where the homeowner, usually a senior, offers reduced rent for a room in their home in exchange for small chores and companionship – is getting attention in small towns and cities across the country, including a new pilot project in Toronto this summer.

The publication reported that this month, Boston expanded the use of a new housing app called Nesterly – co-developed by a MIT-grad and billed as a socially-conscious solution to both loneliness and soaring housing costs – which creates home-sharing matches between seniors and cash-strapped university students. Sometimes, it’s not only students who are in a financial bind. In January this year, The New York Times reported that many older Americans, who discovered that their savings had dwindled, were looking for millennials to share their homes and split the utilities and the rent equally. For many baby boomers entering retirement, financial security is also increasingly hard to come by. Many North Americans have not saved enough to maintain their pre-retirement living standards. Increased life expectancy and lower interest rates only exacerbate the situation.

In addition to apps like Nesterly, non-profit organizations, such as the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, have been operating a home-sharing service since 1981, matching people who have space in their homes with those in need of affordable housing. It is one of a number of similar programs that have emerged across the country as the population of older Americans grows, as a way to help people stay in their homes.

Similarly, across Canada, affordable-housing advocates have proposed home sharing as a creative option for communities trying to balance a rapidly aging population and a shortage of affordable, long-term rental properties. The most successful home-sharing programs involve a step-by-step process that carefully matches homeowners and tenants, requiring funding for trained facilitators. Whether we like it or not, many Canadian trends follow those of our southern neighbours. A lot of these new projects are modelling themselves after a non-profit organization in Vermont, now more than 30 years old, where matched candidates meet, have trial stays and, if both agree, sign a clear contract that outlines expectations and rules while they live together.

Nesterly, which started as a pilot with the city of Boston last year, focused on university students and expanded in July to include the entire city population, works like a dating app, allowing potential tenants to post confidential profiles that can be matched to homeowners. The team at the Boston app also conducts criminal-record checks and follows up on references, then allows homeowners to choose from a number of matches. In its pilot year, the program made 10 matches – there are now another 50 active “hosts” on the platforms with thousands of home seekers to choose from.

Nesterly staff also help facilitate interviews and finalize detailed home-sharing contracts and even collect the rent on behalf of the homeowner, while taking a small percentage, and a fee for offering continuing support. Millennials chosen by seniors homeowners often help with snow shovelling, walking the dog, gardening, the occasional shelf-hanging, or chatting to the seniors about any topics of shared interest.

For the older homeowners, having younger company is also potentially a lifesaver. Seniors have a tendency to fall at home and could be assisted by their younger roommates or tenants when such accidents occur. In return for the physical labour provided by the millennials, some older homeowners leave homemade meals for them on the table by the front door.

According to a 2017 study by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, Ontario alone has five million spare bedrooms and three-quarters of the province’s seniors live in houses too large for their needs. Home sharing may not solve Canada’s housing woes, but advocates say it’s an example of how more solutions should go beyond windows and walls.

I’m also glad to see that a provincially-funded pilot project for Toronto will begin this summer – an initiative undertaken by the National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly at the University of Toronto. Tonya Salomans, a social worker who is coordinating this project, sees home sharing as an option for generations to mingle and learn from one another, to improve the health of isolated seniors, while helping young people cover rent. The goal is to match 20 seniors with university students and then follow how well the living arrangements work.

Outside Ontario, this fall, a group of housing advocates in Nova Scotia plan to tour communities promoting options such as home sharing. The Globe also reported that a Burlington entrepreneur has started the Homeshare Alliance, a business that matches people and guides them through the contract stage for a fee.

Of course, home sharing is not for everyone. Seniors have to be flexible (a rare quality to have when you’re aging), enjoy people and set clear rules from the beginning. For those who are willing to give this creative solution a try, home sharing may be the best way to integrate the young and old in society.

There has recently been a lot of interest in how millennials and boomers can better get along with one another. In fact, rather than working alongside one another, the two demographic groups are often known to blame the other for their dissatisfaction with life. Boomers often complain about the millennials’ lack of loyalty and work ethics; while the millennials usually perceive the older group as dinosaurs whose reluctance to retire accounts for the high percentage of youth unemployment.

As a recent Globe and Mail article commented, young people are regularly maligned for being self absorbed and entitled; not willing to “pay their dues;” and impatient to get the promotions and compensation they feel they deserve. Consequently, the widely held sentiment is that they cannot be counted on to stay in one company for long, nor ever be loyal to the company. However, boomers’ definition of loyalty may, perhaps, need to be redefined. Take me, for an example – I’ve worked with only two firms in my professional consultancy career: one for 12 years and the other for close to 18 years. The first one is a global leader in my field and offered me a one-year training program in New York City when I first started out in my career. Thereafter, it had been a vertical trajectory in my career path within that organization in Asia and North America. The second organization, from which I retired, is a national pioneer and leader in Canada. I was made a partner in its largest office in Toronto – the first woman and the first visible minority – after three years with the firm. There were lots of temptations during my 18-year tenure there to move elsewhere or to start my own business. But, the firm always gave me opportunities to grow and learn, and to take up new challenges just at the time when I might feel bored and itchy to move. So when I was working there, loyalty meant a “lifer” with the company.

But the millennials’ frame of reference is very different – they think of being tied to an organization in terms of months, not years. Career employees are no longer dreaming of the day they retire with gold watches at the age of 65 or even younger. Today’s millennial employees are probably thinking of themselves more as free agents. They get bored easily and are always looking for variety and exciting opportunities. They do not want to be stuck with only one-track responsibilities. They want plenty of opportunities to learn and have fun at the same time. While boomers are, very often, workaholics, millennials want more work-life balance instead. Employers need to showcase a work-hard, play-hard environment, and flexibility is key. Even then, you can’t expect your employees to be with you forever because most of them won’t. If you do all the right things to motivate your millennial employees, you might get them for at best three years.

A major TV news outlet recently contacted me to gauge my interest in joining a millennial-boomer duo panel on a weekly basis to discuss topics such as the purchase of a home in your 30s or when is the right age to get married. The TV program is still work in progress, but I think the media outlet understands that this would generate interest among both demographics. Points of view will, of course, differ between the two generations and, at times, there might even be a showdown.

The best approach, however, is to create opportunities for boomers and millennials to work harmoniously with and learn from one another. The Hollywood movie, The Intern, featuring Robert De Niro as the intern and Anne Hathaway as the millennial boss, has now become reality. According to The New York Times, a few enlightened U.S. companies have already paired older executives with junior workers so that the latter could mentor the former. Millennial mentors, as many companies call them, are being pulled into formal corporate programs to give advice to the top ranks of their companies. Some executives want the views of young people on catering to new markets and developing new products; while others are simply looking for glorified tech support – Snapchat 101, Twitter tutorials and emoji lessons.

Renowned companies such as Mastercard, Cisco Systems and Mars Inc. have experimented with these mentoring programs. The same New York Times article reported that the chief executive of insurer Lloyd’s of London has said that her 19-year-old junior mentor has a totally different perspective and leaves her inspired. Even Gen-Xer managers are catching on. David Watson, 38, a managing director at Deutsche Bank, who has been mentored by a 29-year-old engineer in the Wall Street bank’s global markets technology division, said that he’s been given good tips for retaining young employees, like giving them more flexible work-from-home arrangements, and with helping him spot trends in the financial tech industry.

Reverse mentoring – younger people training older workers – is apparently not a brand new concept. In the 1990s, Jack Welch, the then chief executive of General Electric, required 500 of his top managers to pair up with junior workers to learn how to use the internet.  Boomer executives are now obsessed with better understanding millennials. It was reported that millennial consultants now advise companies like Oracle, Estee Lauder and HBO, charging as much as U.S.$20,000 per hour to give executives advice on marketing their products to young people. Overall, American organizations spent about U.S.$80 million on “generational consulting” last year, according to Source Global Research, a firm that studies the consulting industry.

Rather than hiring outside young consultants, many companies prefer to use the young people already on the payroll. Instead of a top-down management hierarchy, mature senior executives find sitting down with someone who’s on the org chart six levels down an educational experience. The traditional mentoring benefit remains in place so that millennials continue to learn from more experienced corporate leaders. But mentoring in both directions helps improve relationships and encourage collaboration within the organization. Instead of a showdown or a blame game, millennials and boomers can definitely co-exist in the workplace in harmony.

It’s encouraging to see that The Economist has been focusing more on the positive aspects of aging populations in the last few years. As recently as three years ago in April 2014, the publication has dedicated a cover story to “A Billion Shades of Grey,” advocating changes in government policies to help accommodate the aging population. But the tone of that cover issue was more doom and gloom than positive – the concern about economic stagnation caused by the huge wave of baby boomers’ retirement was loud and clear in that story.

Then, in the April 9, 2016 edition of The Economist, the tone has become more positive with the article titled, “Older Consumers Will Reshape The Business Landscape.” The article advocated that companies should speed up in targeting this expanding “grey” market and cited examples of businesses around the world with innovative ideas appealing to older consumers. I’ve also echoed this view with my blog post last year titled, “Marketers Gradually Understand Potential Of Boomers.”

So I read with great delight the Special Report on The Economics Of Longevity in the July 8-14, 2017 issue of The Economist again. The report has basically argued that “if employers, businesses and financial services adapt to make far more of such people (the older population), big economic benefits for everyone could follow.” Employers need to change their attitudes towards older employees – ageist recruitment practices need to be discarded and corporate cultures have to change. Instead of reducing productivity and, therefore, hurting the economy, academics have found that older people in multi-generation teams tend to boost the productivity of those around them, and such mixed teams perform better than younger, single-generation ones.

The publication also argued that the second thing that needs to happen is for the benefits of longer, healthier lives to be spread much more equitably. There is currently too much of a gap between the rich and the poor among the older generation, and the best way to resolve this issue is for governments to invest in public health, offer universal access to healthcare and provide high-quality education for everyone. Although the report cited Canada as a good example of a country that manages to attach great importance to such matters, we see and read Canadian media reports everyday that lament how the older generation has not saved enough and cannot afford to retire.

I believe there is a third thing that needs to change: the marketing community and the media need to direct their energy and attention to the greying population. Over the last decade, there has been lacklustre progress in marketing to older people because this is not perceived as sexy. Young people continue to dominate marketing departments and think that the best place for the old is out of sight, out of mind. Although change is in the air, it is not happening fast enough. From aging rockers such as The Rolling Stones who can still fill huge concert arenas; to recent retirees who take on second careers as giggers and entrepreneurs; to older consumers who display young and active tastes in adventure travel and dating websites, “the new old” is defying old age and refusing to disappear into their sunset years.

In fact, The Economist is asking for a new branding of those over 65 but not yet elderly. The youngest Canadian boomers turn 51 and the oldest turn 70 this year. I used to call those people aged 65-70 “leading-edge boomers” and the younger ones “trailing-edge boomers”. But, perhaps, the marketing community can put their heads together and start coining a sexier term. Don’t call this group seniors although they are technically senior citizens. Baby boomers are starting to retire in large numbers in better health and with more money to spend than any previous generations. We feel much younger than our parents did at their age, and most of us have no intention of quietly disappearing from the world. The sooner the market can respond to this huge opportunity, the better our economy will be.

It’s been more than a week after the highly anticipated 2017 Federal Budget announcement and there was hardly any analysis given from the perspective of boomers and seniors. So, I’ve decided to take a stab at it on this blog post.

Many critics said that one cannot look at the budget and dissect it according to age group benefits. But it’s inevitable that each demographic in Canada will naturally review the budget’s impact on their own lifestyle and financial well-being. From the perspectives of boomers and seniors, this budget is not bad even though there aren’t any new policies directly targeting at the mature population.

First and foremost, the relatively affluent boomers and seniors could temporarily take a big sigh of relief. The much speculated increase in capital gain tax – rumour had it that the government would increase the taxable portion from 50 percent to 62 or even 75 percent – did not eventually happen. This does not mean that the Liberals are not looking into a capital gain tax increase soon. So, a word of advice for boomers and seniors who are either planning to sell their investment property or their stocks: hurry up and do it soon before the government changes its mind. There are also no changes made to dividend tax rates or personal income tax rates.

What’s most welcoming news to the sandwich generation is that the new Canada Caregiver Credit in the new Federal Budget will deliver tax relief to those caring for an elderly or infirm family member without the complexity of the old system. There will only be one amount of $6,883 for infirm dependents who are parents or grandparents, brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles, nieces or nephews, and adult children. The Caregiver Credit will be reduced dollar-for-dollar by the dependent’s net income above $16,163 and the dependent will not have to live with the caregiver in order for you to be able to claim the new credit.

According to Global News, the 2017 budget found an extra $720 in spending for people over 65. The budget also earmarks $37.1 billion for the health transfer, and the government is expected to spend $43 billion on it in 2021, representing an increase of $5.8 billion a year. Of course, almost 50 percent of medical care spending goes to people who are aged 65 and older. Moreover, the age credit – which hands out money amounting from $1,069 to $7,125 to Canadians when they turn 65 years old and makes less than $83,427 in net income – still remains intact.

There are advocacy groups for younger generations, such as Generation Squeeze, which protested to the media that the new budget unfairly omitted younger people under the age of 45 even though there were childcare initiatives and a housing strategy designed to give every Canadian a safe and affordable place to call home. But we need to bear in mind that there are a lot of seniors facing huge challenges in their aging years. According to CARP, an organization that advocates on behalf of aging Canadians, over 600,000 seniors are living in poverty, including more than one in four single seniors, most of whom are women.

These are seniors who are having difficulty paying for their retirements when interest rates are low, and that older workers are facing ageism in the workplace and difficulty securing jobs. What I found most disappointing in the Federal Budget is that there are no attempts at embarking on baby steps to introduce a national drug plan. In the end, it’s the sick and poor who are going to suffer most from the lack of a universal pharmacare program.

Boomers and seniors should, however, feel encouraged that a large portion of the Federal Budget is dedicated to investing in the country’s Artificial Intelligence research which will eventually benefit the aging cohort with domestic robotic helpers or self-driving cars. We should also be pleased to hear that the government has a new funding proposal that could more than double Canada’s co-op work placements. The Globe and Mail pointed out that technology companies stand to gain from numerous funding and policy directives, including the three-year, $400 million Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative to boost late-stage capital availability, as well as $7.8 million in additional funding over two years for the Global Skills Strategy to attract outside talent. The Liberals’ budget contains measures that innovation-focused companies hope will make Canada more competitive on the world stage.

Scientists and researchers should also be encouraged by this budget with its commitments to refurbish government labs, renewed funding for stem-cell and quantum-computing research centres and a $125 million initiative aimed at leveraging homegrown expertise in artificial intelligence. I’m thrilled to see that the Liberals are obviously capitalizing on the opportunity for American scientists and researchers to possibly move to Canada in light of Trump’s budget cut of the National Institutes of Health, which spearheads medical research in the U.S. The Globe and Mail also pointed out that in Britain, a recent survey found that 42 percent of academics were considering leaving the country over worries about a less welcoming environment and the loss of research money that a split with the European Union is expected to bring. In contrast, Canada’s budget emphasizes on science and makes a pitch for diversity and talent from abroad, including a $117.6 million to establish 25 research chairs with the aim of attracting “top-tier international scholars.” The budget also includes funding for science promotion and $2 million annually for Canada’s yet-to-be-hired Chief Science Advisor, whose duties will include ensuring that government researchers can speak freely about their work.

On the other hand, the new Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy is intended to build on expertise within Canada – particularly in Montreal, Edmonton and the Toronto-Waterloo corridor – and keep a critical mass of top researchers from drifting away to Silicon Valley just as deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence pioneered in Canada, is poised to transform the technology landscape.

An investment in science, research and technology will certainly create more jobs for our talented youth and scientists and enhance Canada’s leadership in the world. Our nation is also currently perceived as a beacon, not only for democracy in the Western world, but also for our openness and our commitment to science. I, for one, am all for such visionary budget measures.

Just on the heels of International Women’s Day, a report from the U.S. National Institute on Retirement Security indicated that across all age groups, women have considerably less income in retirement than men. For women aged 65 and above, their income is typically 25 percent lower than that of men. As men and women age, the gap widens to 44 percent by age 80. As a result, women were 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older, while women aged 75 to 79 were three times more likely to fall below the poverty level than men the same age.

This finding is neither surprising nor difficult to understand. In the U.S., working women, on average, earn less than their male counterparts, so they have less money to save for retirement. According to the Economic Policy Institute, American women’s media wage is 80 percent of men’s. Many women also take time off to raise children or care for an aging relative, which gives them fewer years to contribute to a retirement plan.

Canada’s situation is no better. According to new data from Statistics Canada released last week to mark International Women’s Day, Canadian women earned 87 cents an hour for every dollar made by men in 2015. The data, which reflects the hourly earnings of Canadians aged 25 to 54, shows the gender wage gap has shrunk by 10 cents since 1981, when female workers earned 77 cents for each dollar earned by men.

According to Statistics Canada, the ratio has improved, in part, due to rising educational attainment by women. In 2015, 35.1 percent of Canadian women had university degrees, compared to 13.7 percent in 1990. But even education does not completely erase that earnings gap. “Even when they had a university degree above the bachelor’s level, women earned an average of 90 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2015,” wrote Statistics Canada analyst Melissa Moyser in her report. “Women are overrepresented in low-paying occupations and underrepresented in high-paying ones.”

Like their U.S. counterparts, Canadian women are also more likely to work part time (18.9 percent for women and 5.5 percent for men), often because they are caring for their children. When measured by annual wages, Canadian women earned 74 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2015.

According to the U.S. Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement, known as Wiser, a non-profit organization dedicated to women’s financial education and advocacy, financial problems in retirement and senior debt arise with insufficient income as a result of lower lifetime earnings and less in savings, costs of family caregiving and divorce. Moreover, women often choose to save for a child’s education over their own retirement, for example, or work in a family business for no pay. Women also live longer than men (81.2 years vs 76.4 years) according to statistics from the United States Department of Health and Human Services. In Canada, women have an average life expectancy of 84 years vs 79 years of men in 2012, according to a report on the Health Status of Canadians 2016 by the Chief Public Health Officer. Living longer and needing more money for the extra years for health care, medical expenses and long-term care needs creates serious problems for women. Running out of money in retirement and managing the rising costs of health insurance remain the top worries for women, according to a new study, “Women, Money and Power,” from the Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.

The Allianz study also found that many women reported uncertainty about their financial decisions. Sixty-one percent of women wished they had more confidence in their financial decision making, and 63 percent wished they knew more about financial planning and investing.

For older women, the good news in terms of financial well-being is that a large fraction of women are working in full-time jobs past their 60s and even into their 70s, according to a study, “Women Working Longer: Facts and Some Explanations,” by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, Harvard University economists. The New York Times reported that the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by the end of this decade, about 20 percent of women over 65 will be in the labour force.

The same pattern is appearing in Canada as well. According to research released on March 9 by RBC Economics, the labour force participation rates of older Canadian women have increased, with a record 32 percent of women aged 55 and older taking part in the labour force in 2016.

Working longer makes it possible to enhance their retirement accounts and avoid tapping into them for living expenses. Employer-based health insurance also provides a security blanket for women who are working beyond retirement years. The extra years of earnings at an older age also mean that they could eventually retire with a bigger Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) amount.

For financial planners and marketers of financial institutions, the opportunity obviously lies in targeting more women clients and helping them make strategic financial decisions and better prepare for retirement. Women are often the CFO of the household. It’s about time that they take care of their own financial needs and security now.