Men are a funny breed of animal; it’s a fact that as they grow older, men need to address a few things though they almost always refuse to do so. Maybe this is illustrative of the old saying that men and boys are only different when it comes to the cost of their toys, but the fact is that it’s always a good idea for any man to sit down and assess where he is and where he’s going.
This doesn’t mean that obsessing over growing older is the way to go, because it most certainly isn’t. What it does mean, though, is that having a plan for a nice retirement income should be a part of any young man’s outlook on life. The old story about the ant and the grasshopper — in which the grasshopper was left out in the cold — it’s a good parable to keep in mind.
However, there are a number of things that are conspiring to keep men from planning for the long run. A literal obsession with aging is leading to activities like men waxing parts of their body they never even used to pay attention to in olden times. Still, it’s probably better that they wax hair off the chests and backs rather than try to dye it with some sort of shoe polish, for example.
For men, they should consider the time when they’re between 20 and 60 as a golden opportunity to get ahold of a great deal of gold in the form of savings and investments. Those 40 years are when men generally feel the most vigorous and when they can also do the most work. Trying to make up for lost years in the 60s to ensure a decent living in the 70s is hardly the way to go, it would seem.
For fact, it’s much smarter to save and invest over 40 years than to try to do so over 10, especially when one is a man and has a somewhat shorter life expectancy than a woman. So, it’s far smarter to take the money that was going to be spent on anti aging eye cream and put it into an interest-bearing account and add to it regularly than it would be to blow a wad on something so temporary as cream.
What’s for certain is that compounding of interest is going to lead to the little bit of money that initially went into that account — as long as a little bit is added to it regularly — turning into a large bit of money over time. At age 60, if that account has been attended to for 40 years, one will be shocked at how much money is going to be in it, though most men refuse to consider taking such action.
Perhaps considering something like what’s been discussed is in some way conceding that one will get old (though one never has to get ‘old, ‘ in all the ways that really matter) and perhaps it’s just a man’s way of refusing to confront the stubborn truth of things. We all have to age and it’s really what defines us as humans, but we have the advantage of being able to plan for it, so take heart in that.
