Age Perspective Part 3

As Time Goes By

Have you ever wonder what awaits you at every level of age (20’s, 30’s, 40’s etc.), if you are reading this blog, you have gone through a few of those levels.  There’s no argument that every level of age in life is crucial in every way.  Having lived the twenties (and this is definitely my perspective), I would have to say that the 20’s are the formative years.  The rest of your life is dependent on what you accomplish, or even set the stage to make happen in later years during your 20’s.

If you totally waste the 20’s age period you can still redeem the rest of your life particularly the 40’s 50’s and 60’s by playing catch-up in the 30’s.  Imagine if you are participating in a car race made of 60 laps, and instead of fighting for the lead in the laps 20 through 30, you decide to make a pit stop and have lunch and a 6-pack.  When you re-enter the race you find that you are a little unprepared to drive to win because of the 6-pack you drank.  To make things worse, you find that all the other competitors (in real life this could be the people that you went to high school with) not only kept fighting for the number one position but they are now 4 or 5 laps ahead of you.

What makes life more intricate is that as life keeps progressing our responsibilities grow.  Some ways that our responsibility grows;  we get married, we have a child or more, we buy a house and trade the sporty car for a minivan (to transport the children), daycare, back to school clothes, shoes, school lunch, soaring medical costs, health insurance (if you have a couple of days I’ll tell you more). It’s always best to get the education and job stability out of the way early.  I have friends that retired at 50 (with a company pension) because they started with their corporations when they were 20 years old.

According to some statistics a man’s life expectancy in America is 75.5 years, for a woman it’s 80.69 years.  It doesn’t matter which you are I would hope that your goal would be to retire no later than by the age of 62.  In order to get in 30 years with any one organization to achieve a nice pension you will need to get started no later than the age of 32.  Pensions and good paying jobs have gotten harder to get since the most reason economic crisis of 2008.  Social Security has been questionable beyond 2030 according to some estimates.  The point I am trying to make is that our youth no longer have the luxury of enjoying the age level between 20 and 30 (with minimum or no effort of future planning).  If you are 30 and not yet working at some kind of pension plan, now is the time to get serious.  Plenty of time left, but no time to waste.

As for me and many others of my generation the old saying; “Better Lucky than Good!” still applies.  I was lucky that I wasn’t a party animal, I lived in a time of the sexual revolution (I was kept out of the front lines by marriage), drinking and drugs were also rampant (I was kind of square when it came to all the “in things”).  To this day I have acquaintances that didn’t survive that era very well. One of my friends described the age levels by social calendar or interaction; before the age of 20 you attend high school graduation parties, the next level is weddings and baptisms, college graduations, toddler birthday parties and anniversaries celebration, next is retirements, followed by funerals.  I am still attending birthdays, anniversary parties, and retirements.  I hope my generation stays healthy so I can postpone the last part of the social calendar.  The best is yet to come….