Middle-aged Blues

I was reading a post on a forum yesterday. A middle age marketing executive was bemoaning his lot in life. He had reached middle age and was £20000 in debt. He hated his life, hated his job and his relationship was faltering. His dream he said, was to become an entrepreneur but he’s sold out to a life of mediocrity in an advertising office. Now he was wondering how he could get out of debt. It was, he believed too late, and so he had settled for weekends sinking beer to hide his disappointment.

This was a sad post but it contained some of the problems that most of us middle-aged people will be familiar with. How many of us had to buckle down in a mundane job for years because we had the commitment of having kids to look after. We had to bury our dreams to face the responsibilities of raising our children and paying the mortgage. Before we know it half our life has passed us by.

We reach middle age with debt from raising our children and paying them through university. Some. Like the depressed poster in the forum, surrender into a life of weekend drinking sessions to hide their disappointment. They accept that they will never climb out of the hole they have fallen into and continue drifting through life on auto pilot.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We may have had to accept a situation that was not to our liking. We may have had to stay in a job that we didn’t like so we could pay the bills and provide stability for our families. When we reach middle age however we have two roads we can take. We can, like the poster on the forum, accept a life of meaningless automation and drowned our disappointment every weekend.

Alternately we can use all the advantages that middle age has. Like for example when the kids have gone we have lots of free time on our hands. Our expenses reduce (not too much I know as we continue to help our children with house purchase, weddings.) Now is a good time to take stock and see what positive action we can take. Most of us will have reached middle age with some debt. If you have had children this is unavoidable.

Now is a good time to start that business you have always dreamed of. There’s no need to take any drastic action like leaving your job. Not yet anyway. Starting a part-time business is relatively easy when you have the time and you are not tied down with children duties. Getting rid of the debt and building a pension pot will not happen through the traditional means of turning up day after day to your old job.

All that will achieve is the same old results. Take the freedom that middle age can bring and use it to follow the dreams you have. The poster in the forum had given up and decided to settle into a life of disappointment. Why should you do that? Middle age offers us many opportunities that we previously didn’t have.