I'm 59 years old. And if you're in your 50s or even your late
40s, we're in what I call the youth of our senior
years. And in today's video, I want to share with you some learnings from my
journey, both as an individual and also
as somebody that's been a financial advisor for 20 years.
And the first one observation is, unfortunately,
we're not going to be in the youth of our senior years forever.
Unfortunately, eventually we're going to transition into the middle age
of our senior years and then eventually the old age of our
senior years. And at each of those stages, I want
to look back and say I took full advantage of the years that I
had in the youth of my senior years. And I want you to be able
to do that as well as you approach these years.
So let's talk about a few of the major learnings. And the first
one is that my health is much
more important than my wealth, my health and my time.
Let's talk about health first. And while the
lifespan for Americans continues
to go up, unfortunately our health spans
are not increasing. So we're living longer. But how
long we have in life with a healthy life is relatively
we don't have much time. The World Health Organization reports
that the average American's health span. The time that
we have until we have a major health issue, unfortunately,
is just 66.1 years. That is
just 13 months past when many of us
are planning on retiring. In fact, I like to share with
people, even if we're fortunate, even if we take care of our health,
most of us are going to have a thousand weeks or less of
healthy active time once we reach 60
years old. And that time is going to fly by in the blink of an
eye. And so again, I want to look and I want to minimize any
regrets. And one of the things that I've
learned so I talked about the health, the time. You know, we're fortunate,
we still have all of this time in front of us, and they're
we want to take advantage of it. There's always ways to make more money,
but there's no way to make more time. And a great example
of this is one of the richest people in the world. Warren Buffett continues
to work, and he should continue to work. He loves working and
he whistles to work every day. But Warren's in his 90s,
and I'd be willing to bet you that he would trade his fortune,
most of it to anybody in their 50s if he could trade
places with them, if they're healthy. And that just shows you the value of
our time. And I want us all to be treating it that way and thinking
through, you know, how can we be thoughtful and deliberate about
how we spend our time? What are the things that we want to achieve?
So we just don't go through this youth of our senior years on
autopilot, but we have a game plan.
And if you'd like help thinking through that,
a great book was written by Bill Perkins.
It's called Die with Zero. It's got a strange title,
but one of the concepts in the book is coming up with what he
calls not a bucket list, but a life bucket list.
What are the things you want to do, the adventures, the trips,
the things with friends and family that you want to do? And is
there an age at which you become too old to
do it? For instance, backpacking through Europe
is probably something better done by a 50 year old than
a 90 year old. So come up with this list.
If you're married or you have a significant other, I highly suggest
the two of you read it together and think through what are the things that
you want to do. For instance, for me, I learned to surf in my 50s,
and I'm super glad I learned in my 50s, because when you're learning
and you're falling off the board, the wave is tumbling you
and you need some flexibility. It gets harder to do that as our flexibility
decreases. So what are the things like
that and what are the things that you should do sooner rather than later?
And what are some of the things that you might be able to do later
that you can postpone so that you can do the other things that require
your health and your vitality to do?
Okay. The other really key thing as a financial Advisor
for over 20 years that I've seen is the decision on when
you retire is really important. Too many of us
default and we autopilot on 65 because
that's when most Americans retire.
And it's also easy to default on a later age
just so we can continue to save money. Right? Part of the culture in the
United States is he with the most toys
wins. And I think that's unfortunate because
toys aren't what bring us happiness. Toys being, you know, boats and
fancy cars, yeah, they're nice for a while, but it's really relationships.
So how. What are you giving up to
continue to work once you're financially capable to work?
And this is not prescriptive. I'm not saying anybody should retire
early. I just want people to be thoughtful and deliberate so
they look back and they say, I retired at the right time
for me. I'm glad I made the decision. I optimize on life
as opposed to optimizing on my bank account.
I've seen people optimize on their bank account, and unfortunately,
that can lead to regret later in life. So what's
the right thing for you to do? And if you're thinking about,
you know, you'd like some thoughts on how you should think about
when to retire, that's. That's something my life experience has given me.
And the first one is just thinking through, as I
said, you know, your health and your time and how valuable that is.
And unfortunately, as we work, work tends to be stressful.
And even if we don't feel it anymore after 20, 30, 40 years,
the pressure of our job is constantly there,
Right? It's always in the back of our minds. It's hard to disconnect.
And that pressure and stress, it's very common for people once
they retire to say, you know, a, I don't know how
I ever had time to work, but B, I didn't realize how
much pressure, how much stress I was under. The second one is
relationships. Think about the relationships that are important in your life
and how much more time we're gonna have with those people. If you
still have young kids at home, how many more summers do you have
with them? How many more barbecues do you have with them? How many more camping
trips do you have with them until they're off and they lead their own
life? And with elderly parents, if your parents
are still alive, how many more Thanksgivings do we have with our
elderly parents and being able to spend time with them and
just valuing that. And yes, we can continue to work
and do these other things, but sometimes, particularly spending time
with elderly parents, Some folks might be saying, I want to spend
more time with my elderly parents, but I just can't.
So think through that. If you're financially able to, you know,
maybe think about if you retired, could you do the things that
you want to do with your adult parents?
The other thing is adventures. You know, some adventures, like traveling,
they take more time in order to be able to do
them. One of the things that's on my bucket list is
slow traveling the world and spending a month or two
months on different continents and being able to feel like
a local in a foreign land for me. And unfortunately,
I can't take two months off of work. Right? So that's something I have to
think about. What are the adventures that you're postponing because
you continue to work. And then the last thing I want
to talk about is oftentimes people will say, I don't
retire because I don't know what else I want to do.
And that's very common. Many of us, myself included,
struggle with that. But I want to encourage you to really put
thoughtful time into it because I think it's highly likely many of
us will look back and say, I wish I had more time at this stage
of my life to do whatever that new purpose is. Excuse the
train coming here in the in the background. The noise will end
here in a moment. And there's a great book before you leave,
I want to share with you this book. It's a book that
was written by Arthur Brooks. It's called From
Strength to Strength that will help you think through what
is your next, your next thing after your current job?
How do you want to evolve your life? How do you get purpose in
life? And if you found this video helpful, I know you'll enjoy this video
up here where I appear, where I talk about enjoying
your 50s and 60s more and seven things
to stop doing in your 50s and 60s
in order to enjoy life more. Thanks for watching this video
and I'll see you in that one.