The Pig and the Python: How to Prosper from the Aging Baby Boom

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

If you’ve read David Chilton’s The Wealthy Barber, you’ll
experience a strong sense of déjа vu as you tag along while a naive
young couple gets lots of financial advice from the friendly man next
door. (Has fictionalizing an audience for a financial-management guru
become a new genre?)

This time the financial know-it-all who shares pearls of wisdom with
the innocents anchors his investment theories to demographics and the
reality that the baby boomers—like everyone else—get one year older
every year. Today may not be the best time to invest in producing baby
food (the boomers have been there, done that), but it looks as though
stock in a garden-supply shop would be a profitable choice. Boomers, it
seems, are now ready to contemplate nature or at least grow their own
roses.

The authors’ style, although smoother than Chilton’s, is definitely
hokey. Cork’s concept of “passive predators” and his insights into
the impact of the baby boom on economic trends are interesting; digging
them out from under the patronizing, phony fiction is painful.
Throughout, readers are subjected to a hard sell on the use of
investment “professionals.” Since that’s Cork’s day job, his
objectivity might be questioned. Thanks to Canadian demographer David
Foot, interest in “reading” demographics is at an all-time high, and
this book has a great title. Putting these two items together suggests
that Cork and Lightstone probably have a bestseller here.