It’s never too late
When I was younger, I was always in a hurry.
Things were never going fast enough. I was impatient. I wanted things to happen immediately and so I pushed and I pushed and I pushed.
While I’ve never abandoned that sense of urgency, I knew I had to temper it. Keep the fire burning but put a lid on it from time to time. Sometimes the best approach is to lie in wait.
This isn’t uncommon in children. I see it in our kids today. I think it’s a good trait, even if it can get irritating at times.
I wanted to move quickly because I didn’t want to miss out. We are told all these stories of child prodigies and people who achieve so much so quickly. In the 1980s, we didn’t know what could happen to kids who saw success too early (child actors!).
It wasn’t until much later that I realized how long life can be and that success can come at any age. There’s a bias towards thinking early success is a good thing because it’s notable enough to be in newspapers and on television shows.
There’s also a bias towards thinking success is about money, fame, and power.
It took well into my forties for me to realize that it’s never too late and that you define success however you want. And being able to, and accepting it in the face of what society celebrates as success, is the ultimate goal.
Child geniuses and savants are exciting to write about. So is the startup founder who quit Harvard and started a wildly successful billion-dollar company.
They are the equivalent of Lebron James. Rare, worthy of celebration, but not the only path.
The reality is that it’s far likely to experience great success when you’re much older.
There are many examples of people who switched careers and found success later on.
There are plenty of people who have found career success at a later age, I’ve just named a few who are famous. Many are not famous but you just don’t hear about them often because mainstream media doesn’t decide to focus on them.
Until a few days ago, you probably hadn’t heard of Ed Emerson. The 47-year-old led Goldman Sach’s commodities trading division, made about $100 million in the last three years, and is retiring from his role. He joined Goldman in 1999 and has worked there ever since.
The average age of a founder of a highly profitable technology company is 42.3 years old…the media-driven idea that successful founders tend to be young is plainly false…older founders consistently had higher probabilities of success
I’m sure you’ve heard about the power of investing early.
But not everyone has the financial ability to invest early. When you first start working, you have a lot of expenses and little income. So it’s understandable that you may not be “up to speed” at whatever age you think you should be “up to speed.”
But the reality is that you can only start when you start. And it’s never too late to start.
Let’s compare three people who start investing each at 25, 35, and 45. We assume they are saving $100 a month and investing it in a market that grows at 7% per year, compounded daily. They all stop at age 65. (we used this calculator)
The 25-year-old ends up with $264,689.70 – after contributing $48,000 over 40 years.
The 35-year-old ends up with $122,820.44 – after contributing $36,000 over 30 years.
The 45-year-old ends up with $52,365.53 – after contributing $24,000 over 20 years.
It’s easy to point out the differences in balances as another point for the “start late, you lose” argument but then you’re focusing on the wrong thing. The 45-year-old is still up $28,365.53 compared to if he or she hadn’t invested at all.
While it’s not having a quarter million like the plucky 25-year-old, it’s not nothing.
That’s the key takeaway from those calculations. Not that you’re too late and shouldn’t invest – invest immediately whenever “immediately” happens to be.
Investing is important and if you are getting a “late start,” whatever late means to you, don’t take unnecessary risks in an attempt to “catch up.”
First, we’re bad at making these types of bets. It often looks like gambling. It’s the stock market version of the Martingale system.
And second, you aren’t late, you’re exactly where you need to be, and you need to follow the plan of slow and steady wins the race.
Investing is a loser’s game – you want to avoid mistakes more than you need to make winning moves.
The goal in life isn’t to “win” and be done. It’s about constant and continuous improvement.
With victory comes dopamine which comes the desire to win again. It never ends. It’s an infinite game.
Constant and continuous improvement is a sustainable game you can keep playing.
It can be working towards a goal or set of goals, but reaching it doesn’t mean you’re done.
This is a challenge many athletes face because they have a singular goal – win the championship or gold medal. Win a few more. Then they age out of their sport as younger competitors replace them.
Now they have the challenge of learning how to adjust to life after an early retirement.
This happens to everyone. Athletes experience it earlier in their life but with the FIRE movement, we’re seeing more and more people “retire early.” With retirement comes a need to rediscover yourself and what drives you.
There is no championship to win. No milliseconds to shave off your time.
What will do you next?
We have all heard about the midlife crisis – it’s when you reach 40-something and wonder what you’ve done with your life thus far. You have a crisis of identity. A crisis of purpose. Time is running out and we aren’t sure we’ve spent our time all that well. It was thought to be inevitable.
It turns out only “only 15.5 percent of men and 13.3 percent of women reported suffering [a midlife crisis].” (source)
It’s not nearly as common as you’d think – I’d argue it’s uncommon to experience one.
But the narrative still exists because, at some point, you’re likely to have a moment of introspection and not be 100% thrilled with how life turned out so far. That’s OK, we could all use a bit more introspection, but having a full blown crisis is not the answer.
And the best way to avoid it is to do two things:
Solid advice.
Lastly, remember the old Chinese proverb – “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
You’re not late, there’s plenty of life left to live.
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