You know you are getting old when:

[GHT]

If we are going to pretend to be discussing age, we need to stop being coy, and stop dancing around a number.

I am 88.42 years old.

Fair enough, if we are discussing age, I am 19. 4th time around.

 

[LostInTyme]

Your new puppy shreds your tissue-paper skin with it's baby claws and needle sharp teeth. A simple scratch takes two months to heal. Bartender Edit: Let's keep mention of contemporary politicians out of things, please, as it inevitably leads to politics leaking in.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Age? I am in my third epoch, my second century, and my sixth regeneration.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Age? My cavalry boots are backwards in the stirrups as my old charger is led along. Or at least retirement Feels that way some days. The fact that I somehow bruised my heal doesn’t help. Doctor Google tells me that I might be hobbling around for a month before it gets better.

 

[tonyb]

I've always considered "home ownership" a pleasant fiction we tell ourselves in order to lessen the pain of knowing that the bank could and would kick us out on the street at will should we ever default on the payments. I own my house, but I don't expect that I will ever "own" it. My mother bought the house I grew up in fifty-five years ago, but she still doesn't *own* it, not with the subsequent mortgages she's had to take out over the years to head off for just a little bit longer its inevitable collapse into a heap of rotted scrap. My own first mortgage won't be paid off until I'm 84 years old, and I don't expect to live that long.

The dewy-eyed bride and I have “paid off” mortgages only when we refi’ed (not to take out any equity, but to get a better interest rate), but that just means we acquired a new mortgage, so as a practical matter we didn’t really retire a debt; or when we sold a property and had to pay off the outstanding principal.

I fully expect we’ll pay off the mortgage in our current house before long. But, as I noted in the post you quoted, the hits just keep coming. We’ll still be out at least a G a month in taxes and insurance and utilities, an amount that will only increase over time. And that’s not considering the inevitable repairs and maintenance costs.

I’ve long thought there’s more than a whiff of mortality denial in our culture’s notions of property ownership. We yearn for permanence in an impermanent world.

 

[Zombie_61]

Before the end of this month I will have reached and passed my 61st birthday. I have no idea which formula to use to determine which fraction of a number to add to my current age of 60 in order to specify my exact age as of this date, and I really don't care.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Getting 38 in August and I don't know, what the number is going to tell me.
The good thing:
I still can loose weight same easily as always.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Getting 38 in August

I remember turning 40 (over twenty years ago) and sitting myself down and asking myself if I had attained all that I wanted. It was a fairly brutal session. In some areas I was, meh, doing okay. In others, I was clearly behind the curve. I tried to objectively identify what I was doing right, and what I was doing wrong. Eventually, I got there, more or less. The bad news is that my relative success in the following 20 years was, in equal parts, due to pig-headed persistence and also due to a great degree of blind luck. On the other hand, I suppose there is some truth to the idea that you make your own luck. My advice? (Hey, I’m a senior. Can’t I give unsolicited advice?). Know what you want, more or less; be realistic and don’t expect too much; be humble; work hard; find a mentor who will be on your side. Don’t be afraid to take a calculated risk. Be dependable: 90% is showing up on time and doing your best. Support those who work under you.

Sheesh. Is that all I’ve got after a whole career of work? I hope it is taken as it is intended. Good luck, young man!

 

[Tiki Tom]

I still can loose weight same easily as always.

That will change.

 

[Trenchfriend]

That will change.

Sure, but probably not until then, when the bifocal glasses will come along.?

 

[tonyb]

…

The bad news is that my relative success in the following 20 years was, in equal parts, due to pig-headed persistence and also due to a great degree of blind luck. On the other hand, I suppose there is some truth to the idea that you make your own luck. My advice? (Hey, I’m a senior. Can’t I give unsolicited advice?). Know what you want, more or less; be realistic and don’t expect too much; be humble; work hard; find a mentor who will be on your side. Don’t be afraid to take a calculated risk. Be dependable: 90% is showing up on time and doing your best. Support those who work under you.

Sheesh. Is that all I’ve got after a whole career of work? I hope it is taken as it is intended. Good luck, young man!

“I believe in luck. How else can you explain the success of those you dislike?”

— Jean Cocteau

I always loved that observation,

 

[Who?]

When a house that you bought 40 years ago is about the same price as a new car is today.

My parents bought their first house in 1941 …… they paid $3900.

My dad made $35 per week, and their mortgage payment was $37.50 every month.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I hesitate to say this because people tend not to believe it, but here goes .,,

My brother, who died in 2007, bought his 1908-built house in 1975 for $2,051. His daughter sold it a couple years ago for nearly $800K.

When he bought the place the Seattle economy was in the gutter. HUD had several properties in default. The conditions for bidding included a commitment to owner occupancy for, as I recall, at least five years.

 

[Zombie_61]

I remember turning 40 (over twenty years ago) and sitting myself down and asking myself if I had attained all that I wanted...

The main thing I remember about turning 40 was that it was, I felt, the appropriate time to have "the talk" with my wife. No, not that talk, the one about how to not have children. She was born into a large Italian family, many of whom still reside in northern Illinois. As such, we weren't married a week before she asked me when we could start our own family. 20 years later we still had no children, so "the talk" consisted of me telling her that I thought our advancing ages were making it more and more unlikely that we would have children of our own, that I thought it was too late for us to "get in the game" anyway, and that I thought it would be a good idea to take steps towards making sure it wouldn't happen. She semi-reluctantly agreed, so I took one for the team and got "fixed" (it's considerably easier for men). Yeah, happy birthday to me.

 

[Zombie_61]

Sure, but probably not until then, when the bifocal glasses will come along.?

For me it was in my mid-40s. Now that I'm creeping up on my 61st birthday, I can't read anything in small print without "reading" glasses.

 

[GHT]

The main thing I remember about turning 40 was that it was, I felt, the appropriate time to have "the talk" with my wife. No, not that talk, the one about how to not have children. She was born into a large Italian family, many of whom still reside in northern Illinois. As such, we weren't married a week before she asked me when we could start our own family. 20 years later we still had no children, so "the talk" consisted of me telling her that I thought our advancing ages were making it more and more unlikely that we would have children of our own, that I thought it was too late for us to "get in the game" anyway, and that I thought it would be a good idea to take steps towards making sure it wouldn't happen. She semi-reluctantly agreed, so I took one for the team and got "fixed" (it's considerably easier for men). Yeah, happy birthday to me.

Forty? I've been firing blanks since I was twenty-two!

 

[belfastboy]

^^^^^
I hesitate to say this because people tend not to believe it, but here goes .,,

My brother, who died in 2007, bought his 1908-built house in 1975 for $2,051. His daughter sold it a couple years ago for nearly $800K.

When he bought the place the Seattle economy was in the gutter. HUD had several properties in default. The conditions for bidding included a commitment to owner occupancy for, as I recall, at least five years.

Well, that was a score. My parents in 1949 paid $9500, 30 year mortgage at 5 1/2% both term & amortization. My father paid it off in 8 years working a second job as he could not abide being that much in debt.

In the mid 1970's the small Alberta town my wife was born in were selling fully serviced lots for $1 with the condition you had to build a house within 2 years. They wanted to attract folks to this dying town. Now it is just a 45 minute commute into Edmonton.
Would have been a helluva good buy.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I’m getting on in years and I ain’t in great health, yet my concern for the future increases at a rate pretty much commensurate with the advancing years.

The dewy-eyed bride wants a cabin in the mountains. I argue that it’s not the wisest use of the money. That’s apparent when you divide the cost by the numbers of days we’d actually use it.

But if we may as well rent, it’s even easier to argue that may as well be the ones making the money off the rental. Owning rental property can be a genuine PITA. I know this through bitter experience. But in recent decades the vacation rental business has skyrocketed. Agencies, such as the one my sister started in her resort town about 30 years ago, tend to most of those PITA-inducing aspects of rental property ownership. They take a big chunk of the money, but it’s easily worth it.

And then, there are worse places to park money than in unimproved land with recreational potential up in the mountains, and perhaps build on it later. That’s provided, of course, that you got the money to park.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sure, but probably not until then, when the bifocal glasses will come along.?

45. Or you can do like me, and have two different prescriptions, one of which you are constantly misplacing.

 

[Trenchfriend]

For me it was in my mid-40s. Now that I'm creeping up on my 61st birthday, I can't read anything in small print without "reading" glasses.

Legendary german comedian Jürgen von der LIppe made a famous joke about presbyopia.

"Presbyopia was a of course a good thing, back in the old days of humanity. When you were old and not more that fast by leg, you maybe saw the saber-tooth-tiger from far away and could still walk away, early enough.
Yeah, BACK THEN!
BUT TODAY?
What does that do for me, when I see the bus coming, but couldn't see the bus stop??"