Rethinking our next chapter

 

The thought its finally hitting home that I am entering a new phase of life.  Next year I’ll be sixty-five and will officially enter old age.  Lucky for me, I live in the Twenty First century and not the Twelve century when my lifespan would have been over at least fourteen years ago.  This extra time has been good for my psychic and for our finances since that would have been 2007 when so many things happened to us that we are thankful to have survived and could I say, thrived in the ensuing years.  So what happens next? And do we have a say on how the remaining years unfold? 

 

Physical health is probably high on the list of important things to have at this stage.  It’s not guaranteed nor is it automatic.  Part is the debt you have from your lifestyle of the last 60 years, another part on your genes and probably a good part is your luck or lack thereof.  A mixture of those three factors and you end up with a life expectancy and most importantly a certain quality of life to carry you for your remaining years. 

 

Then there is your financial health which could also be a factor of three similar factors: how well you managed your finances in the last 40 years, how much you may have received from others, including your company or the government, and how lucky have you been in your investments or risks you may have taken with your finances.  Mixing those up you end up comfortable in your retirement or bagging groceries, not for fun, but to make ends meet.

 

In essence, it seems that, not putting too much weight on the “luck factor”, how you have carried your life during your productive years has a lot to do with how you’d spend the last phase of your life.

 

If you’re fortunate enough to have those two factors on your side, you get to decide what to do the rest of your life.  If one or both of those factors are spoken for, then your choices will be limited, at least part of the time.

One of the big decisions for that next phase of life is where to do the whole thing.  If you planned it right, and you enjoy where you are, you can just stay in place for the duration, but if you have a multi-story house or a house that is too big or you are far from family and friends or even if you need to go to a cheaper area where your funds would go a longer way, then you have that other question to ponder at.

Another decision is how you will use the bulk of you time.  You may be able to sit to watch Netflix all day long, but you could also introduce new activities to your life.  Things that you always thought you’d enjoy but didn’t have the time or hobbies that you have always entertained but could not do them full time before.