Annoying as it is to be becoming part of the problem with such unseemly haste, one still must applaud a study on the financial implications of the aging of Montana.

Two interim legislative committees are being asked to authorize a look by Montana State University economics professors into what's in store as the state's baby boomers trudge on into codgerhood.

And trudging on they are. According to a 2004 report by the Ninth District of the Federal Reserve Bank, Montana ranked 14th among the states in the population of people at least 65 years old, and census projections have Montana ranking third or fourth nationally by 2020.

Projections say people 65 and above will be 14.97 percent of the state's population in 2010, and 25.8 percent in 2030, when the youngest boomers will be 66 and the oldest a venerable 84. (Currently, boomers account for 28 percent of the U.S. population. In 2030, those oldsters, despite the inevitable drop-outs, will still make up a full 20 percent of all Americans.)

The problem, of course, is that those old people will require more state services at the same time that there is a smaller percentage of working Montanans providing the tax revenue that pays for those services. Montana, with its lower-than-average income levels coupled with its higher-than-average percentage of elderly people, could be in a bind.

Montana's aging population, said Rep. Bob Lake, R-Hamilton, is like "the gorilla in the closet" that people want to ignore but that needs to be addressed.

That's for sure. As some of us can attest, the aging process isn't exactly slowing down. Montana needs to do what it can to get ready. After all, it's bad enough to be getting old. We don't want to feel guilty about it, too.