What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?
If there’s one thing I wish I had started doing earlier in life, it would be preparing for retirement.
When you’re young, you know retirement exists, but you don’t really understand it.
It feels so far away that you think:
“I have plenty of time.”
And then one day, you’re 60.
Welp.
Suddenly, retirement isn’t some distant chapter in somebody else’s life anymore.
You’re looking at it thinking:
“Okay… maybe we should have been talking about this a little sooner.”
I think about my uncle and his wife.
They retired at 50.
When I was younger, I thought 50 was old.
Now that I’m 60, I look back and think:
“Wait a minute… they were babies!”
They spent a good portion of retirement traveling abroad and eventually built their dream lake house.
Watching them taught me something I didn’t fully understand when I was younger:
Retirement isn’t just about stopping work.
It’s having the freedom to travel.
To build the house you’ve dreamed about.
To spend more time with family.
To wake up and decide what your day is going to look like instead of someone else deciding for you.
I wish I had understood that when I was younger.
I wish I had realized that the choices you make in your 20s, 30s, and 40s can create the freedom you have in your 50s, 60s, and beyond.
But here’s the good news:
It’s never too late to start thinking differently.
Maybe I didn’t start as early as I should have, but I’m thinking about it now.
And perhaps that’s what getting older really teaches us.
You can’t go back and change what you didn’t know then.
But you can take what you know now and do something with it.
So, younger me…
I wish you had started preparing for retirement a little earlier.
But older me?
She’s still making plans.
Welp… better late than never.
❤️