Gen X were born from 1965 to 1980. Although it’s possible to retire from 55, that’s pretty rare. Some of us are over 60 already though, and starting to retire, or at least start making plans for what to do with our lives. So in 2026 what are Gen X doing with their partial or full retirement?
Gaming
Pong appeared when the oldest of us were 10. The earliest home computers (ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum, Commodore 64) arrived when we were teenagers. Only the nerds amongst us got those. We had to load games off tapes, which could take up to 5 minutes. Proper games consoles came along, like those from Atari, Nintendo, and Sega, soon after that. As they got better we started to get jobs, and so while we had the money, we didn’t have the time.
Now though, we have the money, the spare room and the time. It’s not just the nerds amongst us that are creating the games cave, complete with multiple monitors, surround sound and ergonomic chairs. Our eyesight may be beginning to go, but if we sit close enough to the screen, we can shoot as well as we ever used to. It doesn’t matter if the hearing’s fading, we can just turn up the volume.
Music
Album anniversaries are going by: Brothers in Arms came out 40 years ago, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory came out 30 years ago. Record companies are putting together special editions with vinyl editions and multiple CDs containing what seems like every single bit of audio from recording sessions, demos, outtakes and live versions of the album we already bought on vinyl or tape first time around and then CD second time around. We are happy to spend our annuity income on these box sets and the record companies are happy to take them. With more time on our hands then we can listen to every single of those CDs over and over now. Ed Sheeran records all his composing sessions, after having to fight plagiarism lawsuits, so imagine how many hours and hours of faffing around in the studio will be in the 40th anniversary edition of Play.
Property
Having ridden the property price wave from when you could buy a house on a single person’s average salary, so long as we managed to stay married or navigate divorce settlements, we’re in a reasonable house and looking to downsize into our last but one home (the last one being the care home). With an eye to the future we’re making sure that there’s a downstairs toilet/wet room and room for a hospital bed, should it come to that.
Sport
With a good 30 years possibly ahead of us we know we ought to move a bit more than we have so far. Fortunately there’s plenty of choice, so long as we can get over our prejudice of old people’s sports like walking football. That prejudice is probably our biggest problem, but if we can accept that we too are now the old people. Crown green bowls still seems a bit ridiculous but there are these strangely named new things called padel or pickle ball.
Hobbies
Now is the time to indulge hobbies. We like crosswords so we’re planning to hook up a Raspberry Pi to the printer and get it to print out the Guardian crossword every day. Actually, it might just be me who’s doing that.
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