Skimbaco Lifestyle is all about living life to the fullest right now, and enjoying what we have today. But it doesn’t mean that you should live recklessly, or without thinking about the future. Not at all!! Quite the opposite.
Genworth Financial contacted me and rightfully reminded me that financial planning is also needed, and I do agree.
Creating the lifestyle that you love living takes time, and it takes a lot of planning. But I also don’t think anyone should deprive themselves an enjoyable lifestyle today so they can enjoy life in the future. There has to be a balance!
Many times when I speak about achieving a lifestyle you love one topic pops up in people’s minds. Money. While yes, money gets us many enjoyable things, but it doesn’t buy you happiness, and I think many people are miserable in their lives because their focus is in trying to make more money so they could be happy without realizing that money will never make you happy, and you will never have enough of it. When you get more money you will just think of more ways to use it and it is a circle of chasing money. My personal opinion is that you should make money doing something you love, something that you would like doing anyways even if you were not being paid. That way we live life with purpose and enjoyment – but are still living smart. You can not be happy or enjoy your life if it is overshadowed with money trouble, that’s for sure.
This is why proper lifestyle planning is so important, and while I love writing about happy light stuff like how new clothes can lift up your spirit, let’s have a serious moment here. You can’t be like a kid who spends all of her allowance on candy. Heck, even my kids don’t do that. Other kids ask them if they want to go buy candy and my kids answer they are saving their money for college. And me too – I worry more about my kids college than my own financial future, and that’s not right, especially for my kids who might be the ones having to pay the bills!
Women outlive men – take charge of your financial future
I read a post how my friend Susan’s
Nana lived to be 93 years old and she lived the last 33 years as a single, retired woman. Both of my grandmothers,
Mummo and
Mamma, stories are a lot like Susan’s Nana’s. Now – what if that happened to me? Or you?
And who is going to pay me living life to the fullest when I’m old and I can’t work anymore? I know, that’s a question we will hear a lot more about in the presidential race and politics, but I don’t think we can leave it up to society and the politicians to figure out and hope there is a solution when we are old.
Sadly, we can’t leave that to our husbands either. My husband handles the money related things in our household, and while we had good intentions and started doing it all together, at some point I just sort of dropped the ball, and let him take care of it. But I should start paying more attention, and so should you. Ideally I would die on a same day with my husband, holding his hand after over 70 years of marriage, and go together with him, like an
Iowa couple did last week, but this
Notebook-style movie scenario doesn’t happen often. Cold fact is that women live 5 to 10 years longer than men, and statistically there is high change that we will outlive our husbands – hopefully not by over 30 years like Nana, Mummo and Mamma did. Only 15% of the people who live to be over 100 years are men according to Tom Perls, founder of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University.
I know, you didn’t want to read this – I didn’t want to write it either, but let’s face it, woman, you need to know the facts, life ain’t all
unicorns and puppy dogs handbags and high heels.
Long Term Care
I know nobody wants to think about possibly being alone the last decades of our lives and possibly living in a long term care facility (or having someone to come to your home to care of you), but I guarantee you it will be easier to sit down, do your research and think about it ahead of the time than just go with the flow.
Genworth Financial is a great place to start, and what I found out from their site wasn’t really the information I wanted to spice up my day with. They stated that at least 70% of people over age 65 will require some long-term care and of those who need long-term care, 40% are under age 65. While this might not be timely for your own life right now and you are like me and more worried about sending the kids to college one day, this definitely is something that you should be talking about with your parents and especially your mother or other women in your family.
Take the next step now.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored post by Genworth Financial, but all of my opinions are my own. I thought it was a great topic, and hopefully it will help you and your loved ones for better financial future. Come and thank me later.
