For most of your life, you likely viewed money as your best measure of success. You chased it, you saved it, you stressed about it, and occasionally you lost sleep over it at 2 a.m. while mentally calculating whether you could afford both a vacation and a new roof.
In your 60s, though, the way you view your success changes dramatically, and the things that start rising to the top of your priority list? Yeah, they cannot be deposited into a savings account.
Here are the 6 things that matter more than money once you hit your 60s, and why your wiser and more mature self already knows it.
Your Health (Yes, Even More Than Your 401k)
You have been told countless times: “If you have your health, you have everything.” In your 30s, you just nodded politely, hearing that, and went back to eating that gas station sushi because you did not value that advice enough to change your behavior. However, in your 60s, you finally get it; and you get it in your knees, your back, and many times your left shoulder for no particular reason.
No amount of money will ever compensate you for all of the sleep that you didn’t get, the stress that you did not manage properly, and the vegetables that you avoided. However, what money can do is help you access good healthcare, but only if you have built the habits that make healthcare worth having.
Peace of Mind
By your 60s, you have spent decades of your life holding onto grudges, regret, unresolved arguments, and having at least one long-standing, unresolved family feud based upon something nobody remembers any longer. Here’s what hits hardest: dragging that weight around wears you down, much like hiking with a backpack full of rocks that don’t even belong to you.
Peace matters more than ever when you hit your sixties. It’s not about not having conflict anymore, but the ability to not let conflict or the anxiety live inside you rent-free. In this decade of your life, you will feel an urge to mend broken relationships, apologize for your old wrongdoings, and finally let go of the resentment that continues to adversely affect your happiness.
Your Time
In your working years, time was something you casually traded for money, giving as much of your best hours to employers, commutes, and meetings that could literally have been emails. But now that you’re in your 60s, you finally realize that time is the most non-renewable resource you own, that can never be replaced.
In your 60s, you become much more selective about how you spend your time. So, that obligatory dinner with people who totally drain you is not going to happen anymore. However, you’ll jump at the chance for a weekend trip with your oldest friends who still make you laugh until your sides hurt, without even looking at the price of airfare. Because that’s not something you can just buy on Amazon, even with Prime.
The People Who Actually Show Up
Once you hit your 60s, you have been through so many birthdays, funerals, surgeries, and silent treatments that you know the exact people in your life that matter and are not worth your time. You do not need to keep score or count how many people you know anymore. And what’s left are the real ones… the people who actually call to check in, who sit with you through your tough times, and who find the same ridiculous things funny as you do.
You have come to realize that the quality of your friends is far more important than the quantity. A small gathering with the right friends is worth far more than a large gathering filled with hollow small talk every single time. You are much better off with three good friends who truly know you than you are with thirty people who only know your name.
Sleep (The Simple Luxury You Once Ignored)
It wasn’t too long ago when you were bragging about running on five hours… yeah, it was cute back then. However, in your 60s, getting a full eight hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep stores up bigger dividends than your stock portfolio.
Now you cancel plans for it, and you defend your sleep time with everything you’ve got. You invest in the best mattress, the blackout curtains, and the most comfortable weighted blanket. Because now you believe that no meeting, no money, and certainly no message notifications are worth interrupting this precious time.
Purpose and Meaning in Your Life
Here is a quiet crisis nobody warns you about: retirement can feel amazing for about the first three months. After that initial honeymoon period, the lack of structure, the loss of identity, and the absence of contributing to society gnaw away at retirees in ways that no cruise ship buffet will fix. Money can surely fund your retirement, but it sure as hell cannot fill it.
By the time you turn 60, purpose becomes a real psychological need. Things like mentoring younger people in their careers, volunteering, creating a new passion project, writing a book, tending a garden to provide food for the neighborhood, or teaching your grandchildren something of value… start feeling like the whole point. In short, having a purpose for getting out of bed in the morning becomes very important for you.
16 Thoughts Everyone Has at 50 But Never Talks About
Now 50 and still sizzling hot (and getting hot flushes), and your head? FULL of what nobody ever speaks aloud. We are not here for whispering, though. We are here to scream out those midlife thoughts that you’ve suppressed behind false smiles.
16 Thoughts Everyone Has at 50 But Never Talks About