7 Things You Need to Do to Prepare for Getting Older

If you’re lucky, life plays out over a long period of time. There are also different seasons to life.

* You’re a dumb kid.

* You’re a teenager who doesn’t know anything but thinks he knows everything.

* You’re a college student who also thinks he knows everything but also typically doesn’t actually know anything except how much you need to drink to get drunk.

* You’re in the working world in your twenties.

* Now, you’re in your thirties. Weren’t you supposed to have a private jet by now?

* You’re 40 years old, but you still feel 25.

* You’re 50. 50 is old, right? How did you become 50? When did this happen?

* 60? 70, 80? Older? It seems like just yesterday you were going to concerts and getting drunk with your friends in the clubs. What’s going on?

As someone who has gotten older, one of the most ironic things about this is you spend most of your life focused on the moment. When you’re 15, 25, or 35, you’re not thinking about what life is going to be like when you’re 60. This is natural and normal, but it’s also like being in the spring and not thinking about the fact that you need to plant some crops because winter is coming.

Your life is like that, too, and you need to think of it in those terms. If you don’t, your mistakes will become more apparent as you get older. They certainly have for me, my friends, and the people around me. I wish I could tell you I’ve never made any mistakes, but I have. You probably will, too, but better to read this list and avoid them if you can.

1) Build a nest egg: You need to invest with your priority number one being not losing the money you have. You need to start early and keep on going. You also need to do that first because if you spend what you want and invest last, you probably aren’t going to have anything left over to invest.

You do not want to be the person who’s 60 years old with nothing in the bank, living paycheck-to-paycheck, doing some crap job that you hate, and knowing you’ll have to do it or some other lousy job until you die. If you don’t invest some small amount of money consistently for a long time and keep doing it, that’s probably your future. That may seem grim, but you can’t count on Social Security to float you ten years from now, much less for the rest of your life.

2) Keep your expenses in check: You can be broke at any level of income if you don’t control your spending (see the US government). By that, I mean, don’t put too much money into a house, don’t get a new car every five years, and don’t get used to the finer things in life. At least not ALL OF THE FINER things.

For example, I love to travel (something I’ll mention again in this article). I spend a significant amount of money on it and, believe it or not since I don’t look like an athlete, I spend a lot on staying healthy. But my house and my car? They’re not extravagant. I use a cheap cell phone, I don’t have cable TV, I don’t drink, and I generally don’t put a lot of money into things that aren’t important to me. Unless you’re phenomenally wealthy, you have to pick your spots to spend if you want to be financially secure.

3) Do what you want to do while you can still do it: As I mentioned earlier, I love to travel, but I had stomach surgery this year that had a lot of complications. I currently have a wound vacuum attached to my stomach and realistically, I can’t travel right now. If all goes well, in a few months I will be back to 100% again, but the point is that you never know what life is going to throw at you.

If you’ve always wanted to go to Alaska, go to the Super Bowl, go to Lollapalooza or meet that girl you’ve been talking to forever in the Philippines, do it while you’re able. Set aside some extra money and go for it because nothing is promised to us. You don’t know what your health, money, work, or family situation is going to look like down the road, and you don’t ever want to be sitting around going, “I wish I would have done it when I had the chance.”

4) Don’t wait too long to get serious about dating: I’m a terrible example of this one myself. I’d still like to get married and have kids. Am I too old? Some people would say, “Yes.”

This happens to a lot of people these days, particularly women. Incidentally, I am not saying this to put down, pick on, and be negative about women in any way. I love women, but our society has started giving them a lot of what I think about as unhealthy messages on this subject. It tells them to build a career and date around in their twenties, stick to the highest standards, and land a primo man later. Well, that can be hard to do when fertility and, I hate to say it, but it’s true for all of us, metabolism can both tank by the time we’re thirty.

You can be the best-looking person in the world at 20, be average by 30, and on the downside of the mountain by 40. That’s true for all of us and yes, we have more than a little control over it, but an awful lot of it is also genetic. If you want a family, if you want someone who will kiss you on the forehead and think that you’re the most amazing thing in the world at fifty, landing them earlier is better than later.

5) Guard your health: The world is full of people who have a physical problem, didn’t address it, then had it get orders of magnitude worse as they got older. Similarly, I’ve known more than a few stud athletes who bought into the whole idea of, “no pain, no gain.” They got hurt, kept pushing themselves until they broke something, and then as they got older, they found that they had created permanent physical limitations for themselves.

As you get older, there is NOTHING more important than your health. You can see it all around you. Today, there are probably more people than ever who look like athletes in their fifties, but on the flip side, there are also more people than ever who look like they’re deteriorating fast at fifty. If you feel good, strong and mobile, the world can still be your oyster at 95. If you feel weak, sick, and immobile, life can start to suck at 40. Put effort, money, and time into your health. As you get older, you will be glad you did.

6) Keep growing: As you get older, there is nothing easier to do than fall into a rut. You do the same things over and over. Work, watch TV, mow the lawn, make dinner, go to sleep, do it over again and next thing you know, you stop doing certain things because people “your age” don’t do that. Then, maybe your physical capacity drops a little and your world feels much smaller. Next thing you know, you look back and you feel like you’ve been doing the same old boring same old for years.

That’s why you don’t ever give up on building new skills, trying new things, going to new places, and meeting new people. You need that variety, and you need those options to keep feeling like your life is advancing in the right direction. 

7) Treat your family and close friends with the importance they deserve: In life, there are typically very few people who end up “on your team” and really, genuinely care about you. When you find people like that, treat them with the importance they deserve.

Personally, I was guilty of being too cavalier with important friendships when I was younger. Guess what? A decade or two later, I still miss some of those people, but once you let a friendship lapse, it’s really hard to repair it. The same can be true for relationships with family.

This column was written shortly after the 2024 election and there are now lots of stories about people who decided to cut off their family over who they voted for, and you can’t help but think, “What a terrible mistake.” Other than God, nothing and nobody should be ahead of your friends and family. As you get older, they’re going to be your lifeblood.

Last but not least, if you’ve been falling short on some of these, just remember that the old Chinese proverb still applies:

If I spent my whole life doing the wrong thing in every way until I was old, I’d still rather change directions and do the right thing at the tail end of my life. Better to do the right thing for a little while, than never to do it at all.

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