Your Travel Window Is Closing: Why 60 Is The New 80

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]We've all heard the phrases 40 is the new 30, 50 is the new 40. Well, unfortunately, I think 60 is the new 80.

[00:00:12]And let me tell you what I mean by that.

[00:00:14]And that is many of us think if we're healthy now, we're healthy in our mid50s, we're healthy in our late 50s, we think we're going to stay healthy like that for another 20 years. And I hope you do. But the reality is many of us will not. So I retired when I was 59 years old. If it had not been for the pandemic, I probably would have retired three years earlier. Um during the pandemic, I was able to work remotely for the first time in my over 20 years of being a financial advisor. Um and and so I was able to take advantage of that.

[00:00:52]But here's what I discovered. What I discovered is for the first time in my life, I had never ever in the past had to think am I physically able to do this activity particularly things that the average you know tourist can do. Um it I may have said do I want to spend the time do I want to spend the money? I mean my hobbies used to be hangliding, paragliding, surfing, skateboarding. So just mountain bike riding, skiing. So just about anything I wanted to do, I was able to do. And fortunately, I still can do it. But I can share with you that I can tell that that era of my life is starting to come to a close. Now, not all of it all at once, but uh when I was in um when I was in Guatemala, I hiked up a a sister volcano that only erupted like once a year, once every two years.

[00:01:52]And next to it was a volcano that erupted like every 15 minutes. So the strategy was you went up the sister volcano and you could see these active eruptions. And it was great, but it was a six-hour hike up. It was pretty it was a pretty intense altitude gain as well.

[00:02:11]And when I did that, I knew I wanted to do it. So it was never a question of do I want to do it? But it had never occurred to me that I may not be able to physically do this. And I'm glad to report I was able to do it. In fact, I did a video on it. You might be able to uh see it popping up here. But for the for the first time as I was doing the hike, I was thinking, you know, this is at the edge of my physical ability. And part of that is just because as we get older, we start losing muscle mass. Now, I lift weights two or three days a week at the gym, not because I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but because I I want to slow that progression of me losing muscle mass. We also are bone density. Uh the calcium starts uh getting out of it. This is certainly not medical advice. Um but it's just a fact of life. And then our ability to push ourselves physically, things like our V2 max, um, those go down as well. And it's just a reality that there is a reason when you go on these tours with people in their 70s, which a lot of us are are thinking, well, I have plenty of time left. I don't have to I don't need to feel urgent. I don't need to have this sense of urgency about when to retire, but I wish that was the case, but I don't think it is. I think we need to have a sense of urgency, particularly when we get into what I call the youth of our senior years, which is that magical period of time from 55 until we lose our health. This is for for and for most of us at 60 years old. We have less than a thousand thousand Saturdays as I record this is a Saturday. I have less than a thousand Saturdays of healthy active time remaining. And that's not a lot of time. We have less than a thousand weeks. The World Health Organization in fact tells us that the average American they do a study called the healthy average life expectancy. the health study h a l e and at birth the healthy average life expectancy for an American is 66.1 years old that's just 13 months after when many of us are planning on retiring and I don't know about you but I want a lot more than 13 months in fact I used to tell my doctor when I was in my 40s I'd say hey doc your your key job for me is to help me make the decision when I decide to retire. Because I want at least 10 healthy, active years in retirement. Why was this on my radar screen? For two reasons. One, I have a family history on the male side of my family of men having heart issues early in life before 60. My father's brother, my uncle, passed away of a heart attack before his 60th birthday. I have several male cousins that had the same thing happen to them and many cousins that have had heart attacks or strokes. Um they're still alive fortunately, but now they're dealing with a serious medical issues. So that was one reason I told my doctor that.

[00:05:37]The other was I worked as a financial advisor for over 20 years. And I saw firsthand how people that had made a lifetime of good decisions that had sacrificed for their lifetime had put off retiring because they thought they had plenty of time. Really, they they put it off for for three reasons. One is they thought they had plenty of time.

[00:06:01]Two was they just didn't feel comfortable that they have enough. I I'll let you inside of the tent. Even people with $2 million or $5 million and and people with $500,000, the answer is always when I have double the amount I have now, I'll feel comfortable. And the good thing is once you've saved up your first $500,000, it doesn't have to take the tremendously long period of time to get that next 500,000 because you have that base of money working for you. So that was the second reason they didn't feel that they had uh enough money. And the third one was harder to get people to talk about but is super important. Before I go there and this is just an example of why working with a financial advisor is so important. Yes, I had access to the latest and greatest software tools, but more importantly, me and my team had access to hundreds of families and had seen when families made decisions that they're glad they made and also when families made decisions that maybe later on they regretted. So, it's the wisdom that comes and it's been a huge compliment. Many of you have reached out to me and said, "Hey, Assul, can you be my financial advisor?" And I wish I could say yes, but I'm retired, right? I want to enjoy my retirement. And I think the best use of the skills and the uh knowledge that I've gained through my career is sharing it with you all here for free. My clients used to pay thousands of dollars to get access to the room uh where they could ask me questions. And I love being able to have this conversation. My goal is to feel like we're sipping a cup of coffee together. We're sitting at a picnic table. That's actually where I am right now, sitting at a picnic table and having a a meaningful conversation.

[00:07:54]And so when people reached out to me, I said, "No, I can't be your financial advisor." The follow-up question was, "Can you refer me to somebody?" And my answer to date has always been, "I'm sorry, I don't do that." But I've had enough people ask me to that. We're going to try something. Uh we're going to I'm I'm going to give people referrals to financial advisors and we're going to see how it goes. I may do it for a few weeks. I may do it for a few months. I may do it for a few years.

[00:08:23]I hope I do it for a long time. But if you're interested in something like this, click the link below to sign up for the weight list to let me know that you're interested in in me sharing a a name or two with you of somebody that you can work with. We'll see how it goes. This will sign you up for my newsletter, but importantly, it'll tag you so that I reach out to you first and say, "Okay, here's what we're doing.

[00:08:50]Here's what the program looks like." Uh it's important you read the disclaimer that's showing up on screen as well.

[00:08:57]Okay, let's keep going. So people think that they have all this time. Um and they think they have enough time.

[00:09:04]They're worried that they don't have enough money and then they're worried about the transition. That's the big one. I suspect many people watching this, you know, if you if you've looked at your financial plan, I think a lot of people are getting close to when they can retire and you certainly want to make sure that you have enough for you to retire. Um, but it's facing this transition that can be scary. It's a big transition, right? Whatever you've done for the last 20, 30, 40 years, most of us have gotten really, really good at the job and it becomes part of our identity. And it's hard to switch that off. But the way to look at that is unless you're gonna work until the day you die, you have to go through this transition at some point. Quick aside, I'm I'm going to offer a course on this.

[00:09:54]I know it's a lot that I'm talking about here, but if you're interested in that, click on this link here and it'll give you information about the course that I'm going to offer. But so those are the three things I I want to see you squeeze all the juice out of the youth of your senior years. Part of that is having comfort with your financial plan. We talked about working with a financial advisor. We talked about the session that I'm going to hold. If you want to develop your own financial plan, this is the software I recommend you use. It's called Balden. Used to be called New Retirement. I like it because it's powerful, easy to use, and affordable.

[00:10:32]Don't do it on your own. Use software designed for you. Again, this is bold.

[00:10:36]If you sign up for it here, you'll get a two-eek free trial and you'll be supporting the channel because I'm an affiliate. And then finally, super important topic. It's kind of part two of this video, which is why waiting at 65 to retire might be a big mistake.

[00:10:51]I'll see you in that video. Thanks for watching this one. Bye-bye.