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60 Years Old: Erika Murphy

The oldest baby boomers got jobs and bought homes before prices skyrocketed — and they're still reaping the rewards.

“They benefited from the big group coming behind them that drove up the value of their real estate . . . and now is driving up the value of the stock market,” says demographer David Foot, author of Boom, Bust & Echo and an economics professor at the University of Toronto.

But these, ahem, upper-middle-aged boomers are resistant to the idea of getting old: Despite pushing 60, they feel years younger. Back when Erika Murphy turned 50, she figured that it was time to start acting “mature.” That didn't last long. Instead of buying sensible shoes, she got two tattoos: a sunflower on her arm and a butterfly on her leg.

“I don't think of my age as a deterrent for doing things,” the 59-year-old says. “I didn't change when I was 50, why am I going to change when I'm 60?”

Despite fighting birthdays, the earliest boomers know that retirement is in reach, and they are concerned about whether their nest eggs are big enough. “If I want to retire at 60, is there enough there for me?” says Ms. Murphy, whose husband died two years ago.

Still, she says, “I'm not an old woman.”

50 Years Old: Tom Reid

Because there are so many of them, the middle boomers, who form the biggest bulge, grew up doing things together — from learning how to ride bikes and smoking pot to getting their first jobs and having kids. But they also had to fight to get ahead.

“It's an advantage in that the market knows you're out there and takes care of you,” Prof. Foot says. “It's a disadvantage in that you've got to compete with more people.”

As 50-year-old Tom Reid sees it, the large number of people his age changed the world. They blossomed at Woodstock. They put a man on the moon. They helped to end the Vietnam War.

“We felt that we had power . . . because we knew we were so numerous,” says the publisher of a Toronto film and television directory.

Today, they're at the peak of their careers and their stress levels are dropping. Their kids are starting to learn how to drive and they have figured out work-life balance.

But these boomers still share a special kinship. When Mr. Reid, a divorced dog-lover who is planning to get engaged soon, meets someone around his age, they pick up on each other's insider references, from music to historical events. You can look at somebody, he says, and think, “Where were you at 16 to 24? Were you a long hair? Were you a hippie? Did you go through some of these things?”

40 Years Old: Michael Redhill

To hear them tell it, the youngest baby boomers had the toughest time. From the day they were born (the youngest turn 40 this year), they have lived in the shadows of older counterparts, who blocked their career paths and inflated real-estate prices. They had to work much harder, but now they have jobs, mortgages and families of their own.

“They're finally relieved and still a bit angry,” says Prof. Foot.

Take 40-year-old Michael Redhill. “I perceive those who are 15 or 20 years older than me as the ones who are in charge of the reins right now. They're the ones with the power,” he says.

Yet he worries that in a couple of decades, he is going to have to shoulder their financial burden, from pension plans to medicare .

But whatever you do, don't call him a baby boomer. “You're the first person to ever call me a boomer and I've been on the planet for 40 years,” Mr. Redhill says.

Born in 1966, the father of two young boys is both a boomer and part of Generation X (Gen Xers were born from 1960 to 1966), but he relates much more with the demographic made famous by Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel. The way he sees it, he doesn't have much in common with boomers. During the Summer of Love, he was in diapers. The oldest boomers, now 59, could easily be the parents of someone his age.

“Whenever anyone mentions a category like boomer, Gen X or slacker or whatever,” he says, “I always think they're talking about somebody else.”

Jill Mahoney is The Globe and Mail's Social Trends Reporter.