The Biggest Mistake We’ve Made in Our Lives

My husband and I are firmly entrenched in midlife. We’ve been married for over 20 years, and by most accounts, we’re successful. My husband and I have a nice home, two cars, and jobs we enjoy. However, lately, we’ve felt an uneasiness about our lives. We couldn’t place why for a while, but after some reflection, we’ve discovered the biggest mistake we’ve made in our lives.

What Started Our Unease

Our parents are getting older, and we realize they won’t be around in another decade or two. That naturally caused us to look at our mortality and remaining limited time on Earth. When you’re in your twenties and thirties, you have a long life ahead of you, and you have time to put off things “until life settles down” or “until you’re more financially secure.” When you’re in your forties and fifties, you realize the time for putting things off until later is over. Now is the time to do it.

The Biggest Mistake We’ve Made in Our Lives

As my husband and I discussed how we were feeling, we realized the biggest mistake we’ve made in our lives is not making concrete plans for the life we want to live.

For instance, we both say we want to travel, and we have traveled to many places in the United States, but we’ve only traveled together internationally to Japan. We still have time to travel, but as I learned from reading Die with Zero, there will come a time, likely around 70, when we won’t want to travel anymore. Any we should complete the travel we want to in the next 20 to 25 years.

We’ve also said that we want to be comfortable financially, but we haven’t explicitly stated what “comfortably” means.

How We Plan to Remedy This Mistake

We’ve decided to sit down together and map out specific goals. We want to travel to Italy, Norway, and Australia. But that isn’t enough. Instead, we also need to determine specifically when we want to travel; for instance, we plan to travel to Norway by June 2026. Then, once we’ve nailed down the place and time, we need to make a plan to pay for the trip. How much do we think it will cost? How do we plan to save money?

We’ll also have to determine what financially comfortable means to us. How much money in savings? In retirement? And then, we’ll need to set specific goals to get to that “comfortable” point.

Final Thoughts

If we could go back in time, I would make concrete plans for my life. Then, we could have used our money for big, audacious goals rather than piddling it away going out to eat too often and buying stuff we don’t care about in the big scheme of life. However, now that we’ve recognized the biggest mistake we’ve made in our lives, we still have time to remedy the situation and make the second half of our lives memorable and satisfying.

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