Watch an interview with David Foot on IE:TV.

The North American boomer is in great financial shape, said economist and author David Foot this morning at The Canadian Institute of Financial Planners conference in Orlando, Fla.

According to Foot, author of the bestseller Boom, Bust & Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift, people maximize debt in their 40s. But, he adds, boomers piled up their debt in order to accumulate assets. “When you look at the latest Canadian data, it shows the debt to asset ratio declines over time,” he told the crowd of financial planners. “[Boomers] have lots of debt but they are building their assets — more and more real estate, more and more vacation properties, more and more financial funds, more and more stock. They have the assets to support the debt.”

The future of Canada’s population is totally determined by the 10 million boomers in the country who are getting older every year. It is therefore vital, he said, for financial advisors to recognize and emphasize the distinction between clients with wealth accumulation needs and those with wealth maintenance needs.

“The best financial advisor is the one that sits down with me today and says this is my wealth accumulation strategy and this is my wealth maintenance strategy and this is how I move from one to the other,” said Foot, who is also a professor of economics at the University of Toronto.

Adapting to clients needs means understanding their habits. Internet use, for instance, is highest among younger generations. “Have you separated out your Web site according to the wealth accumulators and the wealth maintainers?” he asked the planners in the audience. “If you haven’t, you’re not responding to your customer needs. Those who are borrowing will do it on the web; those who are saving do not necessarily want to do it on the web.”

In his books and academic research, Foot studies the intersection between demographics and economics and its effect on policy. When it comes to boomers, he notes the number of years a retiree can expect to be healthy has risen from essentially zero to 10 in recent years. “We’ve seen the average age of retirement coming down for three or four decades and now it’s flattened out,” he said in his conference presentation. “This is raising the question of whether the boomers will want to keep working.”

Foot’s answer to that question is yes, boomers will want to continue working — but not full-time. “We have not got pensions to fill the needs of the aging boomers heading from their 50s into their 60s. And more and more of that planning is falling onto your shoulders,” he told the packed house of planners.

Foot points to demographic trends to explain boom and bust cycles in the economy. “It’s a lifecycle of need,” he said. “You gradually go from childcare to pet care to eye care to pharma care over your lifetime.” Booms and busts in various sectors in the economy, Foot explained, depend on how many people are moving through these parts of their lifetime at specific points in time. “It’s nothing but marrying population pyramids with these lifecycle needs,” he said. “This tells you how the structure of the economy is going to change, what are good firms to invest in and what are not good firms to invest in.”

The ever-popular expression “60 is the new 40” has real economic meaning when it comes to the habits of boomers, according to Foot. “They spend money according to their age, but they want to feel 12 years younger doing it,” he said. “They save money according to their age, but they want to be able to act 12 years younger.”

“This is what you deliver with good financial planning. You tell people how to manage their savings so they can go on holiday and feel younger,” he added.