The title to this post is a play on words from the Jimmy Buffett song A Pirate Looks At 40. This is an ongoing series that started when I was 40 with the intention of sort of updating the post at milestone birthdays. The point is to track how my views on various things might evolve or change dramatically and to hold myself accountable for any lifestyle opinions/advice I might write about.
These are the the previous posts in the series.
- A Blogger Looks At 40
- A Blogger Looks At 50
- A Blogger Looks At 55
- A Blogger Looks At 56
- A Blogger Looks At 57
- A Blogger Looks At 58
- A Blogger Looks At 59
- A Blogger Looks At 59 1/2
The first thing about 60 is I'm glad I made it. That's a serious comment. I don't talk about it a lot I don't think but I had a very rare, very treatable form of cancer in high school. Here's an article from the Washington Post talking about childhood cancer survivors having poor outcomes later in life in terms of not living that long and having depression issues.
The WaPo article taught me to be more grateful for how things turned out. I do have a couple of issues that are probably more from the treatment than the actual cancer. Being direct about it, I have a disability that I have never disclosed here. I am not disabled, I have always invested a tremendous amount of time and effort to be able to overcome my issues which allowed me to be a pretty good beach volleyball player in college and allow me to still qualify as a wildland firefighter at a relatively old age. I've talked countless times about pack testing, this year I was six seconds faster than last year. I think the firefighters know something is up but they don't know what. I am fitter than most of the group but not the fastest hiker.
If you're a long time reader and ever wondered why I am such a health nut, that's a big part of it. The bigger point is that we all have obstacles and many of them can be overcome but it takes effort.
Let's lighten up the mood.
Many years ago, we started talking about doing favors for your future self. I feel like I've been the beneficiary of things I did for the 50 year old and now 60 year old me. Invoking Nassim Taleb, we learn from our grandmothers about not eating too much sugar and the importance of saving money. Is there anyone who doesn't know that it's important to exercise?
Sixty is long past the age where people can start to feel physical consequences for poor decisions related to how they take care of themselves. But if you get to 60 and can still get it done and don't need a bunch of prescriptions then you're probably benefitting from habits taken up decades earlier, or you're lucky which is ok too. Either way, life is much easier.
My involvement with Walker Fire makes it easy to benchmark where I am physically, meaning how well the weightlifting and jumping rope is paying off. My priorities for exercising are for myself first, then to be a good partner to my wife and to set an example at the firehouse. "The chief of a small fire department needs to be able to get it done" someone once said to me and that stuck. The other day I posted pictures from the annual wildland fire exercise I participate in. My capacity to dig fire line is still very good. It is a ton of fun and it is great exercise. Working on any kind of fire always creates the sensation of having accomplished something.
This is also well past the age of starting to benefit from financial habits mostly related to saving and living below your means. At 50 or 60, if you hate your job or otherwise feel you have to do something different, a decent sized nest egg can allow for changing jobs even if it means making a lot less money. Some people call this coast fire. You just need an income to cover expenses, you've already saved enough, you just need to let it continue to grow.
This is where we are financially. A few months ago I mentioned that we bought a house in Tucson with the plan of diverting what would otherwise go into my 401k into paying down the mortgage very quickly. So far we're on track with that but it's only a been a few months.
Making the rounds on a couple of other things we discuss in these posts; I still don't plan on retiring. I still think waiting to take Social Security until I am 70 makes the most sense for us. There's no visibility for my being able to give up the fire chief position. No one is interested in taking that on or even taking a long path to considering it. Over the last year I've been able to delegate a couple of the regular meetings out to other people which helps. I think I will want to continue being a firefighter for a very long time but the novelty of being the chief has worn off.
I've banged the drum many times about the importance of having multiple streams of income and have lived that more than I reasonably expected. It's obviously a safety net if anything goes wrong.
Turning 60 was not a difficult birthday but it feels like a more significant milestone. My theory has long been that if you're happy at home, enjoy what you do and feel good physically, that the birthdays will be easier.
Yes, that is Skeletor on my shirt.
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