Guess what though? I still feel young on the inside! Life does go by too quickly, and when I look back over mine so far, I reckon it's been pretty good and I wouldn't want to change a hell of a lot.
I live in the best Country in the world, in a comfortable house, have a good amount of money in the bank and my future looks OK financially (albeit not as good as it did 12 or so months ago before the Stock Market shit itself......) but I consider myself lucky with another 18 years of work to contribute and many more ups and downs ahead on the stock market over that time.
Many others aren't as fortunately particularly those who have recently retired and have lost 50% of their "nest eggs" with the market crashing. One thing I have learned from this market meltdown is that about 5 years before I am ready to retire I will hedge my bets and make sure I don't have too much high risk exposure in my portfolio.
The first 42 years of my life have gone by in a flash so I reckon the next 42 will do the same..... key upcoming challenges for me are:
1) Loose the 30 or so kilograms to get me back to "not looking like a fat bastard". This will improve many things: general health, longevity, blood pressure, cholesterol, future employability and will make me feel a hell of a lot better about myself.
2) Once the weight is lost - maintaining it within a healthy range.
3) When the kids inevitably "fly the coup" in the the next 4 years or so, we will purchasing a smaller home to suit just my wife and myself.... We will get something nice and tasteful as we will be able to keep it looking nice and look after it. As is par for the course, we are continually having "kid accidents" some of which include but are not limited to: accidentally damaging walls, accidentally punching a hole in the gyprock while showing friends how tough you are (without realising that gyprock isn't that strong), dropping food on carpet, dropping coke on the carpet, consistently wrecking things with no rhyme nor reason.
4) Putting more into my self managed super fund (going into Cash at he moment !) - and setting us of for our retirement
5) Once the kids move onto their own lives the wife and I will be able to save allot more money than we do now, and we will get into some world travel! (BTW, I am not trying to get rid of my kids, I love them dearly)
Both my wife and I, love a good holiday and seeing new places but haven't been able to do a great deal of late with trying to cover the costs of living and building a modest nest egg along the way. We will definitely be doing at least one big overseas holiday per year (maybe 2 if we can afford it!)
A picture of my beautiful wife and a few of her friends taken during our last holiday on the Gold Coast
This is me in my element at Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast, QLD.
Well there's a few thoughts from the deepest recesses of the Regmiester's brain, but I wanted to share them so people understand a bit more about me and where I am trying to go in life.
Reg
4 comments:
Similar to me. Almost 40, have 4 kids, tryin to bring em up the right way and giving them a head start..life goes so damned fast. Where is that TV remote? Who dropped stuff on the floor? Yep, same in this house. We live normal lives I reckon, lol.
Setting up for retirement is wonderful... some people are dipping into their nest eggs, yes, and well, I am guessing if it is not planned right there will be nothing much for kids in some families to really inherit. Like on that add... spend the kids inheritance and live life! I dunno, I still wanna leave more than a bunch of pictures of myself to them :)
Yeah the kids are a challenge but are a huge part of your life... no doubt once they move out I will be lost for a little while.......but sure I will get used to it:)
Oh yeah....that's not really my wife in the picture..... was just messin :P
Reg
No worries about the joke... if you can't have a good time in life... what is the purpose?
I don't talk about it much in "life" because people think that you are retarded or mishear and think that you have said "epilepsy" (which people also associate with diminished mental capacity). Ha!
Looks like you may have a decent sense of humor... Love it! I look forward to catching up on your posts!
So true Reg. I know that when Mia, my baby, started school last year..even though I work and all..the days I have off work when they are at school made me think "What AM I going to do?!!"
Then, I was speaking ti someone I had not heard from in a long time on the telephone. She was trying to give ME advice on exercise to do to reduce the size of one's arms! Little does she know it, but she is WAYYYY bigger than I ever have been in my life. She has what I call "The TWIGGY complex", whereby she believes she is small like Twiggy the 70's model...and everyone else is just fat! Haha.
From that very day, I have put on my runners and trakky dacks and my bike helmet and ridden my bike. Every day that the kids go to school and when it is a day off I am off on my deadly treadly peddly. Before now I thought we lived in a flat area. However, my first ride along our Werribee river proved that wrong. We have many many steep "killer" inclinations along the way. One of them is now my favourite..as I can feel it burning the insides of my legs.. know it is doing something.
You see, battling the family history of heart disease and Type 1 diabetes, I know I had to do something. It takes time. I have been doing this since May. It is slowly working.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure you like it, and make the time to do it because you want to do it. Putting on those runners and tracky dacks is the first step ..the rest is just getting out that door and doing it :)
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