The video provides an insightful conversation about the guidance retirees would give to their 50-year-old selves about making the most of life. Primarily focusing on the three core life phases - starting out with time and energy but no money, acquiring money but lacking time due to career and family commitments, and finally having money and time but less health in later years. It emphasizes seizing opportunities while having time, money, and youth.

Viewers are encouraged to heed the advice from 70-year-olds about balancing career, relationships, and renewal time. The importance of cultivating personal rejuvenation and identity is highlighted, alongside practical pointers such as prioritizing physical and mental health, investing in experiences over materials, and managing retirement expenses.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. trap [træp] - (noun) - A situation that is hard to escape from or avoid, often because it is misleading or deceiving. - Synonyms: (pitfall, snare, ensnarement)

And it's actually a common trap that a lot of retirees fall into.

2. magical [ˈmædʒɪkəl] - (adjective) - Having an extraordinary or enchanting quality that creates a sense of wonder. - Synonyms: (enchanting, mysterious, wondrous)

...the one magical stage that only lasts a little bit of time.

3. rejuvenate [rɪˈdʒuːvəˌneɪt] - (verb) - To make someone or something look or feel younger, fresher, or more lively. - Synonyms: (revitalize, refresh, renew)

What are the things that you do that rejuvenate you make time for it.

4. prioritize [praɪˈɔːrɪtaɪz] - (verb) - To arrange or deal with in order of importance. - Synonyms: (rank, order, arrange)

It's important to prioritize that recovery time like we talked about.

5. pivotal [ˈpɪvɪtəl] - (adjective) - Of crucial importance in relation to the development or success of something else. - Synonyms: (critical, crucial, essential)

Remember, in your 50s, this is a pivotal time because this is going to set the tone for the second half of your life.

6. intentional [ɪnˈtɛnʃənəl] - (adjective) - Done on purpose; deliberate. - Synonyms: (deliberate, purposeful, conscious)

But here's the thing, we need to be intentional because time's going to only speed up from here.

7. redeem [rɪˈdiːm] - (verb) - To gain or regain possession of something in exchange for payment. - Synonyms: (retrieve, recover, reclaim)

There's actually a verse in Ephesians that says redeem the time.

8. irrelevance [ɪˈrɛlɪvəns] - (noun) - The quality or state of being irrelevant, not connected or applicable. - Synonyms: (insignificance, inconsequence, unimportance)

And it's the fear of irrelevance or irrelevance.

9. superficial [ˌsuːpərˈfɪʃəl] - (adjective) - Concerned only with what is obvious or apparent; not deep or serious. - Synonyms: (shallow, surface-level, cursory)

Avoid superficial status symbols; seek meaningful life experiences instead.

10. foresee [fɔːrˈsiː] - (verb) - To be aware of an event before it happens; to anticipate. - Synonyms: (predict, anticipate, envision)

That's probably not going to happen. That's not going to happen. And then the first few, the first year of retirement expenses were a lot more than what they had thought.

If you're in your 50s or 60s, watch this. Life Lessons from 70-year-olds

We've been working with clients in their 60s and 70s for the last decade and a half and if they could go back to their 50 year old selves and give them some advice, this is what they'd say. There's 10 things here and the seventh one is actually something that I'm struggling with and it's exactly what a 70 year old told me not to do. And it's actually a common trap that a lot of retirees fall into. Now it might be too late for them, but it's not too late for you. So let's get to number one, this first one, it actually might hit the hardest for 70 year olds or even 80 year olds, and that is be aware of the three stages of life and make sure you don't miss the one magical stage that only lasts a little bit of time. We only have a little bit of time in this one and let me show you what I mean here.

So as 70 year olds look back on their life, they see these three stages. When they were in their 20s, maybe 30s, they had a lot of time and they had the health because they were young and they didn't have the money yet because they were just starting their career and getting started. Now this is kind of midlife, where now you're starting to make some money. You're still young and healthy, in your 40s or 50s. But this is the thing, time is what's lacking. A lot of the time we have is going to career and to family. Those are the two big ones. And sometimes there's not a lot of time for hobbies. And then stage three, usually after retirement, when we're in our 70s or 80s, we've got all the time now that we're retired, we've got all the money, but health is starting to decline or we're starting to notice changes there. But there is a magical fourth triangle here and that's where everything is equal in between these two, where we've got the time, money and we're still young enough in our 50s or 60s to do the things we want to do that require some activity and movement. But sometimes we see people stay in this phase for too long where they're so busy and they keep putting off that trip or they keep delaying that adventure. As an example, someone in their early 60s might be more apt to go to Paris and do a walking tour in, in France or wherever their favorite international city is, versus someone who's in their 70s or in their 80s. You know, where it might take a little bit more effort to Be able to do something like that, or if it's hiking or whatever it, anything that requires activity. So don't forget about these triangles.

And this actually leads nicely into the next piece of advice. It's the second piece of advice. When we look at the time side of the triangles here, the advice that we get from people in their 70s is don't forget the three types of time. Because it's common to prioritize two and completely forget about the third one. But if you do that, you could end up really harming the other two. And let me show you what I mean. Now to simplify three types of time, we've got career and then we've got time spent on relationships. And then this is the one we see people ignore the most, which is recovery or renewal time. This is the stuff that gives us energy. And the advice from 70 year olds that I know is during our busy years. So going back to what our life looks like maybe right now, the advice is make sure we know what renews us and then also prioritize it.

What do you really enjoy and what's the thing when you do it? It feels like time flies, you know, could it be walking in nature or maybe working out or maybe tennis or hiking or woodworking? Whatever it is, maybe it's cold plunges and saunas. What are the things that you do that rejuvenate you make time for it. I actually heard a 55 year old, he recently rediscovered his passion for rock climbing. He did this when he was younger. You know, he probably started when he was 5, did it in his teens and his 20s and then it kind of went away. And now he's getting deep into that sport again and it's becoming a bigger and bigger piece of his identity, even more so than his career. His advice was actually try to divvy up, think about your identity in, in the way of a pie chart. Now I don't know if you're, you're that big into charts or pie charts, but this is how he viewed his identity and kind of how he wanted to model his time.

Big piece was still career. A big piece was family. He was big into fitness and faith. But now this rock climbing thing, he wanted to keep expanding wider and wider, not into the fitness area, but really he wanted to cut back on career and expand the rock climbing piece even more. And he's doing this in his 50s because he realizes rock climbing, it's not one of those those forever sports like swimming or biking or maybe tennis or some of those other things we can do in our 70s and even 80s. Now let's get to the third piece of advice from 70 year olds to 50 year olds. But before I get into it, let me know if you're liking this so far. Now, the third piece of advice that I've heard quite frequently from older clients is that it's okay to say no more now, especially in your 50s, because you think about the first half of life or maybe as you were getting started in your 20s and 30s, you said yes to a lot of things.

And part of the reason you're where you are right now is because you said yes to the new opportunities and to the things and that opened up a lot of doors for you. But the second half of life, we got to realize it's okay to say no and respect your own needs and desires, right? It's important to prioritize that recovery time like we talked about. And sometimes the only way to do that is to say no to other things and to other people, right? It's okay to say no to social obligations or work commitments or even new opportunities. It's even okay to say no to friends if the. If it's not serving you right. So prioritize those activities that bring you joy and peace because you've earned it.

Now, the fourth piece of advice from 70 year olds and 80 year olds to those in their 50s is remember, time is infinitely more valuable than money. That whole quote of time is money or yeah, time is money. That's completely wrong. Time is something we have less and less of every day. But when it comes to money, you might be in the place where your money is actually starting to make more money for you without you doing anything. But it's definitely not making any time right. Time is still the scarcest asset we have, even more so than the retirement accounts or the assets different accounts that we have. Remember, in your 50s, this is a pivotal time because this is going to set the tone for the second half of your life and how everything unfolds. But here's the thing, we need to be intentional because time's going to only speed up from here and probably faster than actually, you probably realize this already, how fast things are getting and how it continues. That's a common theme we hear time and time again.

Now there's another piece of advice related to this, and it's that saying of how we can't make more Time, but there's ways that we can actually slow it. And I'll give you an example of a client who actually did this. So here's my life. Let's pretend this is me. And we've got this number of healthy years. And then there's a period as we get older, you know, maybe, hopefully healthy years extends a little bit longer. And then there's a period where we start to slow. And then there is an eventual end date. Right? The end. If we could get this thing to work, that's it. But what if I made a decision in my 50s that created a habit of fitness or cardio or strength training? Could that habit actually extend the amount of time that I have? Could it at least extend the amount of healthy time that I have? And could it hopefully lessen the amount of slow go time that I have? And whatever the eventual end date is, a lot of studies say yes, this is exactly what happens.

Now, obviously we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but an investment of time and money in health, it's proven to give big, big returns. But there's actually a second way to get more time. Now we can't make time, but we can buy it. And you're actually doing this already. Let's say that there's something that you need. Let's pretend you've got to do an oil change on your car and you don't know how to do it, you don't particularly like to do it. So you could find the YouTube video, you could go to the store, get the list, buy the stuff, get the right equipment, and then spend the afternoon changing the oil on your car. And maybe it's two to three hours all in doing that work on something you don't really love to do. Or you can make the decision, go to the local auto shop and then get the oil change in 20 minutes. And maybe you can take a walk while they do the oil change for you.

In the second scenario, you essentially bought 90 minutes of life back, right? Doing something you'd rather do versus something you don't want to do. And you actually helped employ someone who's providing for their own family. A subscriber to the channel said it was time to power wash the deck. I don't really like doing that anymore. And I decided to just hire someone to do it. And I ended up getting back four or five hours of my life back and I provided for somebody else by giving him money to do the job. And then they hopefully were able to support their family and it Was a great feeling. And a lot of our successful clients will have this mindset of I do what I do best and then I pay for the rest. Now they can afford it. There's, we have to make decisions here and see what works. But if you can, buying back your time could make sense.

There's actually a verse in Ephesians that says redeem the time. And when you look at the translation, redeem means to buy back or buy up. And that's kind of how we see our role in our clients lives. You know, they, our clients, they could study, they could learn, they could monitor the investments and apply the tax strategies and investment strategies to their retirement plans or they could work together. And then our goal is to help clients have more of these things. Time and money and peace of mind and energy and all of these things. And the really nice thing about working with a good retirement planner is you can actually see the return that is made by when you buy our time. And really to sum this up, how I look at it is this sccf, it's streamline means clarity, confidence and freedom.

That's what we're trying to do for clients. And the next piece of advice comes from a 69 year old client and it's related to this idea of making more time. We were meeting shortly after her husband had passed away unexpectedly. So she was at the time 68. And as is common when someone you love passes away an important person, we feel kind of lost. So we were talking through, we were doing the things that need to get done and then we were trying to talk about some upcoming things that maybe she could look forward to in the coming year. And she had mentioned, you know, some ideas around travel, health and then also deepening her faith and she listed a few goals under each, each one of those areas. So that year we talked and we had a few times where we connected via phone and she's doing better.

Um, but one year later we met in person and there was a few tax planning strategies we wanted to go over that she could take advantage of. And I'm not exaggerating at when she walked into the office, at first glance I almost didn't recognize her. She looked completely different. She was vibrant, she was healthy and she looked renewed. And no, she didn't have any work done. She told me that she created a few habits around health and then also mental health. So the thing she was doing, she started doing regular yoga and also workouts and she also would spend time in meditation and spending time in the scripture often. So she was 69, but I remember she looked like she was in her 50s. And she told me she feels like what she said. She said, I feel like I added 10 healthy years to my life. And that is exactly what we were just talking about over here.

So that was very inspiring to me. That was surprising. And now as I think back, she really figured out how to make more time, at least more healthy time. Right? She extended her healthy years. So the tip is to prioritize physical health and mental health in your 50s. If we can do that, we can extend that magical triangle that we were looking at earlier and have more of this now. The seventh piece of advice comes from a client who was six months into retirement. And this is the one that I was actually struggling with or continue to struggle with. And it's very common for 50 year olds and retirees as well. I don't like to admit it, but I think it might coincide with that well known midlife crisis, right? And that is playing the status game. Now the status game, that's coined by author Will Storr in his book and it means we often buy things to signal success or to fit in with a certain group.

But the truth is these things, they rarely bring lasting happiness, right? That's what that, that 70 year old or 69 year old client mentioned. I mentioned earlier, six months in, we're mapping out his plan and he said, can we look at a scenario where I finally buy my dream car? I've always wanted one and this is the time to do it. He was in retirement, it was time to have some fun. I said, great. We put it into the plan and we saw it barely changed his graph and his chart and an income plan looked, looked great. So he felt good about buying it. He did it. And then six months later we were talking and we were talking about a few small optimizations to his investment strategy and I said, hey, how's the Porsche? And you might have guessed what he said. And I'll share what he did, actually what he ended up doing with the car. But I want to stress there's nothing wrong with buying nice things, right?

Having I know we've got car enthusiasts who are clients and they're going to disagree with me on this car example. But the main thing is it might be worth an extra 10 minutes just to reflect on the reason behind the next expensive purchase. If you do have one. You don't have to do this, but I'll give you a few examples of others because it's usually men that we see that have this decision around status symbols. And this goes a little bit deep, but where else are we going to talk about this kind of stuff? And I'll actually turn it on myself because looking deeper, here's why I wanted to buy a fancy watch last year, number one, it was validation and recognition. Right. I wanted to have a visible sign of hard earned success. Something that's saying, hey, I've made it right. That's kind of the status. Why we get status symbols.

The second reason we do it is that comparison and social pressure. Right. Unfortunately, we live in a society where we're often measured by what we have versus who we actually are. And then the third thing, why we do this is identity and self worth. And it, our identity is closely tied to our career. We know that. And as we get closer to this point of ending our career in retirement, buying an expensive thing or things can be a way to really affirm our self worth and project an image of stability or power. Right. And then the fourth one, this hits kind of hard and it's the fear of irrelevance or irrelevance. As we move into the our 50s, we might be thinking about fading relevance in this world that really values youth or young people. And having high status things can make us feel like we're relevant and we're signaling that we're, we're still successful and we're in the game.

So back to the. My client with the, with the car, when I asked him how it was, he said, oh yeah, yeah, it's, it's good. But really the excitement wore off in a couple weeks. Looking back, maybe I should have just rented it for a month and that might have been enough for me. So his advice, see if you can rent the experience first before you actually buy the expensive thing. So looking back, he would have rather dropped 3 or 4 or 5k to rent it for 30 days and just have fun and figure out, hey, maybe this is good enough. And maybe it solidifies his reason to definitely buy that, that Porsche. Instead he spent, I think it was 150 or so again, which he could afford, but he spent 150 to figure it out. If we rent experiences, we might spend money on something that we never own, but it might end up saving us a lot of money in the long run.

So the next piece of advice comes from multiple clients who always heard that it's common for expenses to go down in retirement, but the exact opposite happens the first few years. And then it takes a little bit of adjustment and reworking of the plan to just make sure Everything gets on track. Like I said before, we've been helping people retire for a decade and a half. And we'll often put in what if scenarios in their plan to see, hey, what if expenses were more than we're actually thinking about right now? What if we added in big trips or new car or whatever it might be? And, and really, what if this is the go go years like we were talking about? That triangle. Equilateral. Equilateral triangle. We want to spend the money now while we can, and we're young, but sometimes that's not even enough. You know, the most recent or one of the recent scenarios we, we were talking about was expenses is this.

It's 10,000amonth. That's it. Okay, what about this, this and this? No, we couldn't really see that happening. That's probably not going to happen. That's not going to happen. And then the first few, the first year of retirement expenses were a lot more than what they had thought because this is the time. It's now or never. And the expenses became more than what they thought. They adjusted. Things are fine. But here's the advice. Start thinking about tracking your expenses now in your 50s, and use a tool like Monarch Money. And that automatically tracks expenses and it also categorizes it each at the end of each month. So you could say, oh, we spent this much on groceries, this much this month, good to know. Or we spent this much on going out to eat, good to know. Or this much on vacations. So that helps. It gives you some real data versus guessing about retirement expenses.

Then the next piece of advice comes from a client who actually retired in his 50s. And with the newfound freedom of time, he focused on the three Cs, which maybe you've heard me talk about before. One of the C's is connection. And he was focused on increasing that more than he had in the past 30 years. So he, one of the things he did, he reached out to an old friend, one of, I think it was one of his best men in his wedding. And it's someone he had lost touch with in their late 20s and 30s and 40s because they got busy, they had families, they were both business owners. And it was that period of time where they had no time. Right? So now that he had more time after retirement, he reached out to his friend and he said it was like they picked up as if they had just stopped talking yesterday. I think that's a sign of a true friend, right?

Have you ever had that experience before with, with one of Your friends let me know in the comments. Um, but it, it was 20 years of not talking, but now it feels like, yeah, it feels like yesterday. So there's many other clients in their 70s and their 80s where they, they said they wish they nurtured their relationships a little bit more in their 50s before retirement. It's easy to get caught up in the work, in the daily responsibilities, but don't forget to spend time with those who truly matter. So his advice was make an effort to connect with the old friends or strengthen your bond with your family, or be open to meeting new people. Maybe it's joining the club and finding groups of people that actually share your interests, like that rock climber I had mentioned. Because these connections, they're going to provide you support and joy and a sense of belonging in your later years.

Now the next piece of advice comes from people who have a, maybe a stressful job or maybe they're hard charging and yeah, their career can be kind of stressful or it's getting more stressful and they don't want to do it anymore or they can't do it anymore. And because life is so busy, they don't spend that much time thinking about what they're actually going to do in retirement. You know, they, they, they need to stop and they, they need to, all they can think about is obtaining more rest in leisure. Right? They, they're not worried about the financial things, they could cover that, but they just need to stop what they're doing because they're, the stress is too much. But here's the thing. Clients who have been that way, people we've talked to who have been that way and then retired, they say six months in, you know, retirement's kind of boring. Or is this really all that there is in retirement? So here's the advice that they'd give you.

They would say, don't just run away from something. You really have to focus on what is that thing that you're going to be running towards. So plan for retirement, not just of leisure, but plan for retirement of purpose. Start thinking about what your purpose is in retirement. It's never too early to start exploring the things that you truly enjoy or the things that you kind of forgot about since your teen years or 20 years and seeing how you can integrate that into your life. Right now, in a few seconds, I'm going to give you a few questions worth writing down in a kind of a guided thing here to think about how to make this your best stage of life yet. Because remember, growth doesn't come from just the experience that we have. It comes from reflecting on the experiences. So you've got the best stage of life coming up. You've got a lot to look forward to. If you agree with that, give this video a like.

And also, it's just remember, it's not too late for you. Take the advice from those who have gone before you and the ones that are giving advice and maybe pick two to three things that you heard today and write them down. Maybe, maybe save those things. Or watch this video again and pick the two most important things. And then here's the video with the questions to write down and think about on your next peaceful, quiet morning where you're drinking a cup of coffee. And then if you're looking to make your retirement even better, check out these videos here. I hope this was helpful. Take care and I'll see you in the next one.

Entrepreneurship, Finance, Motivation, Retirement Advice, Life Stages, Time Management, Streamline Financial