Retire Happy

Stanley Bing's secrets to a happy retirement:  "Your goal is to go down face first in a 28-ounce T-bone at the age of ninety."

Bing if a columnist for Fortune.  His Retirement guide came through CNNMoney.com.  His guide may be humorous, but it contains many profound truths.  Read it in its entirety here.

Other tips: 

"'My house is worth a million' is not a retirement plan."

"Stay put.  Where do you think you're going?  Someplace new and strange?  That's why God created hotels."

"You've got to keep your hobbies hobbies.  They're called hobbies because you do them to relax, to get your mind off more serious things.  They're not supposed to be done all the time.  That's no fun.  Oh, and speaking of the whole notion of fun, don't expect to have it every day.  In fact, make sure that every day you do something that isn't fun."

"That's why it makes sense to exercise more than you used to, not less.  You have the time.  You want to continue to abuse your body in a million other ways, so take care of it.  That doesn't mean going completely around the bend and becoming a hardbody for the first time in your life.  I can't tell you how many guys I've known who keeled over about a week after they told me they were running 25 miles a week and were in the best shape of their life."

Finally:

Always look your best.  As you become older and less attractive, the need for aggressive grooming and sartorializing grows exponentially. So forget about all those lifelong aspirations to let it all hang out.  Some tips:

-     Get a haircut every week, even if you have no hair.

-     Don't grow a beard unless you're a woman.  But seriously, If you had a beard before, you may keep it.  Other than that, it's a place to store crumbs.

-     Do not take up the wearing of bow ties unless you are attempting to create a persona where before you had none, or are on MSNBC, which amounts to the same thing.

-     Shower regularly.  People like smelly old people about as much as they like smelly young people.

-     Bag the comphy clothing.  Wear a jogging suit only if you intend to go jogging.  Always wear a belt, and make it leather or cloth, not shiny plastic. A belt keeps more than your waist in.  It constrains the part of personality that wants to sag.

-     Wear no spandex.  You look terrible in it.

[Image from all-ecards.com]

Comments

[Shawn Lea]

I heart Stanley Bing. I always look forward to his column on the inside back page of Fortune. (And how can you not love a man who wrote a book titled Sun Tsu is a Sissy - or some such thing I am too lazy to look up right now.)