A five step plan to live a life with no regrets
By Lucy Thackray for Daily Mail Australia
- Work on your relationships
Family and friends are the most important contributor to a happy old age, but are you really investing in, and building that support framework now?
Like the elastic in your knickers, so don’t appreciate it until it’s gone. Friends are precious and are like gardens – they need watering and fertilizing – and weeding too! Inevitably in midlife, marriages evolve.
Don’t sit by and watch as your lives become parallel train tracks. Consciously work on merging them and keeping them that way.
If your parents are alive, you are lucky. Tell them how much you love them, record their voices and their stories (and them telling you they love you) and make sure your children get to know them. As for children themselves, one of the most important jobs we can do as parents is give our children memories for when they are older…And love yourself first…
Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship in your lives, yet curiously one that we only begin to examine and explore in midlife. I have learned that you have to be your own best friend. Happiness is like a dodgy bank heist – it’s an inside job.
- Be Financially Independent (A man is not a financial plan!)
Step being ostrich woman with your head in the sand! I am staggered by the number of women who crackle with intelligence but have no clue about their financial situation. You must be the ruler of your own financial destiny, whether you are in a relationship or not. A full life is ready and waiting for all of us. But you have to go to it – it won’t come to you. Define where you want to go, point your arrow, let it go and engage with life. And always, always trust your instincts. Roar!
Jane Matthews’ 10-point ‘Financial Blueprint’
- Articulate your financial goals.
- Assess your current financial situation
- Learn to be financially literate (Google ‘financial literacy’ for starters)
- Credit cards – Get in top of them. Only have one.
- Budget (look up budget planner on www.moneysmart.gov.au)
- Develop a savings and investment plan
- Work out how much you need in retirement
- Review your insurance policies
- Make sure you do an annual review of your finances
- Get key documents in place (e.g. a will)
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Donna Henes is the author of The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife. She offers counseling and upbeat, practical and ceremonial guidance for individual women and groups who want to enjoy the fruits of an enriching, influential, purposeful, passionate, and powerful maturity. Consult the MIDLIFE MIDWIFE™
The Queen welcomes questions concerning all issues of interest to women in their mature years. Send your inquiries to thequeenofmyself@aol.com.
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