However, there are certain pieces of advice that are applicable to people of all ages, such as maintaining clean eating habits, engaging in regular exercise, fostering healthy relationships, and building a strong network of friends and acquaintances.
Considering this, what kind of advice can individuals in their 60s offer to those in their 40s?
Work: find your niche. Accept that you're not going to be a hotshot coder/consultant/whatever forever. However, outside of 'fashionable tech' there is an entire world where you can make a comfortable living and nobody cares about your age. That doesn't mean you can stop learning: remaining up-to-date on relevant skills is important, but 'relevant' does a lot of heavy lifting there. Be knowledgeable/reliable instead of trendy.
Leisure: don't put off things you truly want to do until some unspecified later date. You might not make it (see 'health' below). Find at least one activity to enjoy on at least a weekly basis, travel (even if it's close to home), go for walks, spend time with your loved ones.
Health: everything truly and rapidly gets worse once you're 50. Stop smoking now, stop drinking now (or at least moderate a lot), talk to a doctor on a regular basis, take care of your teeth (really).
(That last paragraph is awfully generic, but until such time that we invent time machines, a very important one...)
> Accept that you're not going to be a hotshot coder/consultant/whatever forever.
I would add that it's likely that you won't even want to be a hotshot whatever forever. Getting older is like every other change in the stages of life. Some doors close, some doors open, but mostly -- what you enjoy and want out of life changes. Embrace that, and don't keep chasing the things you wanted in youth purely out of habit.
It’s so true. There were things I imagined myself becoming or doing when I was younger. I never got to them but also had nagging feelings about them every once in awhile.
Once I let go, it was liberating. I now pick a few things I go deep into and other things will just have to wait or may never happen, and I am okay with that.
I too am worried about either moving into management or starting my own company or something else because there’s no way I’m going to be a worthwhile IC into my 50s. I need to do something more.
I'm curious why you say this.
I am 40 next year and have missed the opportunity to niche down - I work as Tech Product Manager and enjoy my job but find very little opportunity to really focus on something I truly enjoyed. Either the startup run out of money, the project in the large org got cancelled or there was simply not product role available.
I'd be glad to know if somebody has an advice on how to niche down (technology, domain, personality, branding etc.) Thank you
It works like this: you start a new job with a nice big bump in salary. You buy a new car, go to fancier restaurants, take dates to "in places", move into a nicer apartment. With each increment of income, expenses increase. Pretty soon you are trapped in an awful job but the pay is too good and you have no savings.
Getting off the hedonistic treadmill is very painful. But there's more to life than staring at computer screens and putting up with shitty bosses.
With a motivation like that, I found it very easy to "jump off the hedonistic treadmill". But I was never one to give high importance to showing off wealth or status. Those things have very little importance to me as in my view, all they can give me are superficial "highs" of feeling superior, but then I immediately remember that the desire to feel superior itself needs to be suppressed as it is not just evil when taken to the extreme, but also is a never ending race where there's no winner and no real satisfaction.
The flip side of this is you save/invest a lot, thinking it will get you to passive income, and the overspending masses vote a new tax raise on the "rich" only for your delayed gratification to never come true.
Case in point, those who paid off their student debt are in the minority. Those who don't vote for student debt forgiveness. The minority did the "right thing" by paying it off and lose out on gratification.
Be careful overfitting as if the rules of the game can't be rewritten to your detriment at any given moment by the dumbest 51% of the population.
Yes, a bigger house with a bigger yard, a better car etc. would be nice.
...but I have everything I need that costs under 10k€. There are a few bits I could upgrade, but I'd have to pay a 50-100% premium for under 10% quality improvement, so not really worth it in my book.
Short version: after Covid, we realized we didn’t care about “stuff” and we wanted “experiences”.
After Covid lifted, even though it didn’t affect anyone fatally in my immediate or extended circle fatally. It did make me change my perspective and priorities.
In June 2020, my youngest (step)son graduated from high school and decided to work and not go to college. I made it clear to him and his mom since he was 9 (when we first got engaged) that I would find a way for him to college. For all intents and purposes they were my “sons”. I had planned to cash flow his college expenses. But after asking him repeatedly, he assured us he didn’t want to go.
The same month at 46, I fell into a fully remote role at $BigTech and assigned to a virtual office that meant a significant pay increase.
In 2022 my wife and I both decided we wanted to move to Orlando for a change of pace and decent weather all year.
We found what we thought was a nice condo and learned it was a unit in a condotel. An arrangement where we own the condo unit. But could only stay there 6 months out of the year. The rest of the year it was rented out like a room in a hotel and we got half the proceeds.
My wife then had the brilliant idea of us “nomadding” for the other 6 months (actually 7 from March through October).
We sold our cars and now we take Uber everywhere when we are traveling and use SixT and do monthly rentals when we are home. We fly from city to city in the US and stay in midrange hotels.
Everything we physically own that’s not real estate fits in four suitcases. It would be three. But I have one packed with my “business clothes” for the occasional corporate trip
My wife is deep in the fitness industry and before we go to a new city, she reaches out to instructors in that area to take and guest teach classes.
When we are “home” we pay one fee that covers all utilities, internet, access to a gym, a lake, and multiple large pools, three restaurants and a convenience store onsite.
We threw out everything and downsized from a 3200 square foot house in the burbs of Atlanta to a 1300 square foot condo that was the same price in 2022 that our house was in 2016. We rent our house out to our son and two friends
Take care of your health!
A mental fabrication like “you are 65” can unlock thought pathways that you have subconsciously blocked.
Your children will (need to) leave the house. Prepare and assist them.
Your family home will be oversized, if you can, pass it to one of the kids who needs it most.
Moderate your financial fix costs.
Get your car / bike / sailing / paragliding licence now.
You are still a player in the "looking for a partner" market, go for it now or forget about it completely.
Be really leery of anything that builds resentment. It's an insidious relationship poison.
So I dont think your snippet about that is necessarily accurate.
The IRA and the HSA are also tax deductible.
Spend your health care expenses with the HSA, making them cheaper for you.
I'm not a tax accountant, and if you want accurate advice consult with a CPA.
The list of potential causes is long: Bank and government failures, demographic collapse, AI, climate change, war, inflation. Or, some future government might simply decide that they need that money more than you do.
And no, "the people" won't revolt if that happens. They will be far too scared to do so.
The only thing that goes up is ammunition.
So sure, it could happen, but I'm not going to diversify, because that won't work, either.
It doesn't mean this one won't be the one. But I think one can build up their wealth without the paranoia baggage from generations prior.
A more positive spin on this, is to remember not to keep all your eggs in one basket. Things do fail, so therefor your wealth should not be in one thing either.
One thing you should never do is get into the mindset that "Ah, everything's gonna fail anyway" and then completely fail to prepare for a comfortable retirement, and all the (often expensive) things that will happen between today and your last day.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/30/jack-ma-dont-fear-making-mis...
At 40, I'm just doing what I'm good at, learning things that interest me here and there. But my main dedication is to my health and wellbeing. I changed jobs to WFH and stopped being a manager/VP to return to be an IC in something I like that is low pressure.
Because I've loved the thrill of startups, I do tech Advisorship for new startups, particularly for people that want to do something tech, but have no clue how to start. I charge in equity only, which makes it thrilling for me.
This is so true, thank you for expressing this thought so concisely. In my language (Bulgarian) there's a saying "whatever you eat and drink now, nobody can take away from you", which has a similar sentiment, but also acknowledges the risk of unforeseen future circumstances - nobody can predict if there's going to be another pandemic, economy crisis, war - when calculating future gains one needs to also take the risk of those into account.
On the other hand, money saved & invested now will (quite literally) be worth more than money saved later.
You got a source on that?
20 years ago I knew that if I wanted to have a great career today, I had to learn English. Today, if I want to have a great career 20 years from now, I should learn Chinese.
(since then I left the telco bubble, maybe other parts of the tech industry are not that Chinese-heavy)
- The language of science remains English.
- Only a small part of the Asian countries has languages with a similar structure. Meanwhile, North and South America, Europe, Australia, Russia and India are within the Indo-Germanic language family.
- English has both simple grammar and a simple alphabet. To succeed a language also has to be easy to adopt.
- China is getting more important, but the sum of western countries also will be
Also the language of science remains English because still the west is the most prevalent economy. As history has shown, science follows the strong economies. Let's see how that plays out, if we manage to not implode, because we sure are heading there right now.
As much as I hate American foreign policy and large parts of the culture as well, it sure as hell beats Chinese.
> The language of science remains English.
While I agree with you, born and raised in the Eastern block, they also had their common blanket statements. Looking from the other side, they turned out to be wrong.
I'll keep an open mind, in case I'm again on some other sides.
