1y ago

100, here I cum

Antiwork @lemmy.world

BarterClub @sh.itjust.works

1y ago

Middle-aged

364 22

142 comments

I'm scared shitless that I will make it to 100.
- This. No one realizes that your probably not gonna make it to 100 in perfect health. If your body doesn't go, it will be your mind. Either way, it does not sound appealing.
  If nothing else, the arthritis has gotten so bad, you wanna off yourself anyways.
  Hard pass.
  
  I'm 37 and already broken.
  My back is killing me, the sciatica makes sitting down hard. My ankle is fucked from too many injuries doing shit like tough mudder because when you're young you're invincible. Top that off with an immune disorder and asthma and it'll be a miracle if I make it to 50 with a good quality of life.
  
  I don't wanna get to the point where it seems miserable just to, like, walk or something. I don't mind taking heart medication, walking with a cane, stuff like that, but I don't wanna live in near constant agony just trying to get through the day.
- You should try drugs
  
  Waaay ahead of you there, partner!
  
  Which ones? I feel like I've tried them all
  
  drugs, you say? hmm mmm....

We have robots. It's the future now. We should be retiring at 85 while the robots live in luxurious sky cities.
- I, for one, welcome our new robot overlord.

We should be retiring at 50. This is bullshit.
- We should be building a society where the concept of retiring is alien because the entire point of living isn't to work.
  
  RIGHT??????
  
  because the entire point of living isn’t to work.
  But the point of living is simply to survive and procreate. There's no innate requirement of "living" to be not working... we worked hard for thousands of years just killing things to eat.
  
  That is almost impossible. Even if we had machines and robots, there will always be the necessity for people to work
- Wr should be able to retire whenever we want. Fuck work.
  
  If you have enough money then ya
- Women in China retire at age 50, men at 60
  
  how are retirement plans in china? are they good?
  
  really? that seems unsustainable, but would explain a few things I suppose.
- You can retire at any age you want lol. Most people didn't live in their means nor did they save for retirement starting at 18/22. This was possible 30 years ago. These days? Not so much.
  It doesn't mean you can't leverage it way better than most though. Starting a Roth IRA saves more money than even paying off your house loan in half the time. That's saving an extra $70,000 for most. Putting into retirement early triples that lol.
  Compound interest via stock/bonds is a bullshit money generating hack made up by rich people to get richer though. The poors literally get their dregs from riding on their coattails then acting like they invested well. Nobody wants to admit that you should be able to retire indefinitely by what amounts to hoarding above a certain dollar threshold though lol.
  
  Is it really just a simple matter of living within your means when you are constantly bombarded with the idea that you are inferior for not having that shiny new thing and banks are constantly trying to push you into predatory debt schemes like credit cards?
  At that point, I don't blame people for not having a retirement fund. This is a systemic problem, not an individual failure and we should look at changing those systemic failures rather than pointing the finger at people and saying, "you fell for our bullshit and now you are poor. Shame on you!"
  
  I just want wages to increase to a point where people with a decent education can afford a home without any major financial stress.
  It's not normal to have professionals with bachelor's degrees not being able to afford a home.

middle aged would be around 36.
I didn't come here to be insulted.
- Me: *turns 51 in a few days
  Also me: "fuck"
- Spitting truth

According to my kids:
0-30 is young.
31-60 is middle aged.
61-90 is old.
Over 90 is fucking old.
- How fucking old are your kids for them to say that? Real kids would definitely say that 25 is approaching retirement age.
  
  Youngest is 17, oldest is 31. But it was the younger ones when they were around 10 - I think they were just mathematically calculating the middle third. I'm almost in their "old" category now and think that because (fit) people are aging more slowly than past generations middle age is stretching out, if you are defining it as able bodied and working. That stretches it to like 75 for some people. I don't think over 30 is "young" though, so if there are only 3 categories it's middle aged, and no way is 75 not old, if you are fit, healthy, and working at that age you are a fit old person.
  And who can't rock a bikini at 30? WTF, where do you live?
  
  All kids are real kids. Maybe the kids you know are just dumber than this guys kids 😂
  
  Same, even when I was in Jr High I thought people about to graduate college were old and may well be middle aged compared to me.
- The whole point of calling somebody "middle-aged" is that they're in that indeterminate space where they definitely aren't young anymore, but they aren't like, old, old, yet, basically they're still able-bodied enough to hold down a job.
  Not one. Not the other. Somewhere in the middle. Middle-aged.
  30 isn't so old, but it depends hard on the person in question, some are still in great shape, but many 30-year-olds have been nursing a back problem and/or jacked knees for years by the time the birthday comes, they sure as hell don't feel young. Some 30s haven't had kids yet, some of them have kids in middle school. So that averages out, and we onboard you to this shitty party at 30. If you can still rock the swimwear at 30, do it, and don't take it for granted.
  For the record, we don't care what children think old is. Children are insane.
- Fuck. I'm really middle aged aren't I...
  
  I'm just about to get old LOL
  
  You and me both Obi.

I don’t disagree, but people get confused by average lifespan because it includes babies that die. If you live to 60, in the USA you’re expected to live another 21.4 years (almost 82). https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/05/long-life-does-not-always-mean-a-healthy-life-in-old-age.html
And that number is still an average. But I get it, 50 still isn’t the middle.
- People don't understand what life expectancy means, specifically because 99% of the time, people are talking about life expectancy at birth. What life expectancy st birth means is that half the babies are going to be dead before X years (in the case of OP picture that mean half are going to die before reaching 73 yo), so yeah, the majority of people is going to be 50 yo at some point of their life.
- https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
  And interestingly 38-39 is when your expected remaining is your age.

Thanks for starting my day with giving me a midlife crisis.
- Brah, I kinda figure education that was for you didn't count .... If it helps

eh, you're free to retire in your mid 30s. it's easy. i retired in my late 30s, then went back to work again when I ran out of money a few years later. it was nice, i look forward to retiring again.
- Most people would call that a sabbatical.
  
  Interesting. Is retirement just a sabbatical until death?
  
  yeah, you could call it that. for my mental health I referred to it as a retirement.
- Did you FIRE and calculate wrong or had a bad few economic years?
  
  oh no, my job was offshored by IBM - I decided I wasnt going to work anymore and did that for a few years. then I ran low on funds and found a new job. I could quit now & do the same thing for a few years but I've got a different plan this time around, it'll drastically reduce my monthly expenditures allowing my next "retirement" to much longer - possibly permanent.
- Dude it is NOT easy to make enough to retire in your 30s. Congratulations to you for even making it a few years. That's a huge accomplishment. But saying it's easy is a bit unfair to those who are not able to make that kind of income.
  Saying this as someone who also plans to retire before I turn 40, and I DO have an income advantage. It has been very difficult even still.
  
  What’s your retirement number to retire by 40?

Avg life span is 80+ in most countries..
- https://www.worlddata.info/life-expectancy.php#by-population
  Nah.
  More below then above.

I've never heard anybody suggest that 50 is middle aged, usually it's traditionally been 30, or nowadays with life expectancies being higher, 36 is spot on.
Anyway, we're all going to work until we're dead, to keep the rich ruling class fed. There's no escape.

I thought 50 was the middle of your adult life, 20-80 ish years old
- This was my understanding as well.

I've always viewed middle aged as 40s
- I agree here.

Wait, your retirement age is less than the average lifespan?
- This average is probably including deaths from accidents and illness.
  
  Sure, but statistically speaking you're as prone to dying from either as anyone else.
  
  Mean Average is a dumb way to track lifespan as many people (still) die in childhood.
  Median is much more representative.

Right cuz that’s why people work til 65. Totally just a choice/s

I guess the point is you're middle aged in regards to your contribution to society. First 15-20 years of your life you pretty much just "take", while the following 50ish you are expected to chip in. In those terms, 50 sounds about right as being referred to as "middle aged".
- Something doesn't seem right about that.
  You're supposed to work 40+ years to pay off a 20 year debt to society? That doesn't seem fair.
  Also you didn't chose to be born, I don't think you owe anyone anything for having to grow to reach an age where you have agency over yourself.
  
  a 20 year debt to society
  It could actually be way more than that when you consider retirement (in much of the western world at least). You also can't really "have agency over yourself" in the sense you mean without making use of what society puts at everyone else's disposal (roads/internet/currency/etc), and freeloading comes with all sorts of drawbacks because society is shaped in a way that doesn't reward it for obvious reasons.
  
  technically NO ONE asked to be born. Not even your parents or your grandparents.
  
  It's not a debt to society. You have to "chip in" to take care of yourself and what you consume & throw away.
  You're free to go live in the backwoods, build a rudimentary cabin, and hunt or fish to survive. That might be harder work than what you've got now though.
- Holy, i never thought about it like that
- Actually, we pay a fuck ton during that time

Uhm, retirement was invented for the elderly who can't really work on the fields/processing plants anymore. Work changed and people got older since then.
- Most people still work manual labor jobs. Cognitive ability also declines with age. Age discrimination during hiring/recruiting is fairly common (witnessed it at nearly every job I've ever had, even though it's illegal, and I've had a lot of jobs). There aren't enough "bullshit jobs" like Walmart greeter for everybody. Aging population can be solved by permissible immigration (which are comparably younger populations), but there are too many racists and politicians worried about demographic shifts.
  
  Since when do most people in the US still work manual labor jobs? Have we not been in a service economy since around the 80s or did I miss something
- Work is now driving people to age faster due to stress.
  
  I took a year off work recently to detox and had a zero cortisol policy. Lines on my face faded, hair looks great and stopped thinning, came back nicely, lost weight, almost have a six pack for the first time in my life approaching 40. People know how stressful work is but most don't understand what it's like to truly live for yourself stress free. I'm super fortunate and grateful for having the opportunity to do that and highly recommend.
  The hardest part about going back to work was reentering that disgusting American corporate culture of toxic optimism. I'm fine with a lot of work and my stress tolerance/management is much better now. But that culture of toxic optimism is hard to handle.
  
  We're living longer and aging slower than ever before now

The average life expectancy of men in the US is 73 (it was 74 pre-COVID).

If they told you 36 is middle age you would be less inclined to live
- Yeah talk about a depressing thought

According to some module I had to take yesterday, 18-44 is “young adult” and 45 to something is “middle aged.”

Since when do people think 50 is middle-aged? To me it's always been 30-something years old
- Apparently getting pregnant at 35 is considered a geriatric pregnancy, so that's what I've always considered mid life.
- Same here. For me, 40 is middle aged, since 80 is the normal age to die. Sure, some die earlier and others later, but once you reach 20 (i.e. discounting the premature deaths), the average woman reaches 81 and the average male 78 or so.

I like the energy, but this is still a dumb take, even if it's common. Where TF did the idea that middle= midpoint come from? So does "middle age" last just an instant?
We have young, and elderly, so what do we call the span in the middle when you're neither of those?

The problem is that we are living longer and healthier than even before and the trend is to keep on rising.
What the real problem is that allowing a person to actually live is troublesome for the current system in place, as in if you do not produce, you are not valuable.
But you are.
- Longer and healthier? Diabetes, obesity, heart-disease and auto-immune diseases are at all time highs.
  
  Specifically because other forms of death are significantly down...
  So yes the average is increasing... But the there are other things causing us some major road-blocks.

The worst part about this is that it reminds me that I'm close to having lived the statistical half of my life, damn.

So, what's the average life expectancy of people who live past the age of 30?
- Great question. Looks like the CDC says it's 78.4 ,(48.4 more years expected at age 30 in one of the PDF charts liked to that page).
  Edit: Typo fix
  
  Wow, that table is super interesting. They broke that down way more than I thought they would.
- Honestly I would be more inclined to ask the median life expectancy of those that live past 30.

Y'all get out of here. Middle age starts at 40. Don't at me.
- Nah dude, the middle ages start at 476

Some say your life doesn't begin until your mid 20s.

Awshit. I'm nearly middle-aged then.

37 isn't middle-aged? I had no idea!
- God where is the next season already

My entire life I heard 40 is middle aged because life expectancy is somewhere around 80. 40 is when the mid-life crisis starts happening as well.

Nice X
- Thank you. It's all natural.
- Thanks!

I've removed myself as much as possible from the economic system. I am trapped, but I'm having fun trying to wake up. ⏰️ Maybe when I can't move much, which will be soon, I'll have to roll into a ditch or something 🤷

142 comments