How Long Do You Want to Live? Here’s My Answer…
Among my wealthy friends and coevals—let’s say, among the top 1% ($6 million+ net worth)—I’ve noticed that the great majority of them are still busy with their lives, eschewing conventional retirement activities for other games of accomplishment.
Interestingly, the most common of these games is accumulating even more wealth than they already have. (Game Objective: He who dies the richest wins.) But logically, it is the least consequential. These are individuals whose current wealth is more than enough to provide for them, their children, their grandchildren, and any other people or organizations they might want to help financially.
From an emotional perspective, continuing with the get-even-richer game is understandable. All the people I’m thinking of began their careers with little or no money. To build the kind of wealth they built would have taken an enormous, almost an excessive, amount of single-minded concentration and sacrifice. When you spend 40 or 50 years working like that, it’s not easy to break the habit. You can’t switch it off like a light bulb.
I know. I’ve tried to retire three times.
The first time, I went back to work because, although I had a significant net worth, the income I could conservatively extract from that each year was not enough to pay for my overgrown yearly expenses.
The second time, I had those expenses covered, but I realized that there were several things I had always wanted to do that I hadn’t done. One of them was writing books. Another was to make a few movies.
Ten years later, having written and published about two dozen books and scripted and produced three movies, I tried to retire for a third time. But I found that I could not get myself to do those things that one is supposed to enjoy in retirement – especially golf.
What I wanted to do, I had to admit, was just keep on working. So, I did. But I changed my manner and purpose. I devoted half of my working hours, about 30% of my income, and more than half of my net worth to three major non-profit projects that, with the help of K and my three sons, I built through a family-directed foundation.
That is how I bowed out of the get-even-richer game and began playing the get-poorer game. But I was, and am, still working crazy hours.
Among my friends that stopped playing the get-rich game when they retired, more than a few replaced the hours they used to spend working with the self-education game – reading books, going to plays and concerts, joining discussion groups, learning new languages, and taking academic courses. I presume it’s because, like I did after my second retirement, they are taking advantage of the time they now have to pursue interests they didn’t have time for during their get-rich years.
And there is another “game” that I notice many of them seem to be playing – one they don’t talk about overtly: the longevity game, the winner of which is he who lives the longest. These guys – whether they are vegans or carnivores or calorie counters – play seriously. They are very strict about their eating habits. They are equally diligent about their exercise, whether it be yoga and meditation, walking 20,000 steps a day, or playing basketball or jumping rope or lifting weights.
I admit to indulging myself, to the degree I can, in playing a similar game. But in my defense, I like to think that I’m not playing the same way. My goal in exercising is not to outlive anyone. My goal is to simply look like I’m going to outlive my fellow players. This is, I admit, a more superficial and less distinguished goal than living to 100. But I learned long ago that if you are 50 and in good health and do everything right in terms of eating well and exercising diligently and taking all the life-extending supplements you can get your hands on, the increase in your lifespan be minimal. The actuarial tables, which are the most reliable of such analytics, conclude unequivocally that it will buy you but a single extra year. Instead of dying at 82, you will die at 83.
So why, one might ask, do I continue to not only keep exercising, but also work like a mad man for 50 to 60 hours a week (and only about 30 hours when I’m “on vacation”)?
The obvious answer is that I can’t help it. But I do have a scientific rationale, which I bring up every time the question is put to me.
Of all the things one can do to increase longevity, the most important, at least according to the studies I’ve read, is having a reason to keep on living. And thanks to my lifelong habit of starting projects that are larger and more time-consuming than they at first appear to be, I have plenty of reasons!
I know that what I should be focused on in the waning years of my life is spending more time with friends and family. And I keep promising myself that I will do that. But somehow in my upbringing, I was infected with two moral commandments that are forever at the base of my conscience. One is to leave the world at least as sorted as you found it. The other is to always finish anything worthwhile that you start. So I also feel obliged to finish the many projects I’ve started over the years but have yet to complete.
So, there it is. And this brings me to a decision I made last weekend…
After Much Internal Debate, I’ve Made a Decision about the Future of MarkFord.Net
This is the antepenultimate weekly issue of this blog. My plan is to publish two more of these weeklies, then go to a once-a-month schedule with a slightly different format.
I read and watch a ton of material every day to feed the briefs and essays I’ve been writing on current events and topical issues. The new monthly publication will have little to none of that, as I’ll be attempting to restrict my writing to topics that have more universal applications – i.e., topics that will still be worth reading after I’m dead and gone and, thus, will provide me with a way to win the longevity game even if I don’t make it to whatever age the actuarial tables and fate have ascribed to me. As a bonus, I’m hoping it will free up plenty of time for me to focus on the other projects I want to finish.
Meanwhile, before moving on to the new format, I want to thank all those who have helped and supported me on this latest writing adventure. On top of my list are Judith Strauss, my editor of 30 years, and Giovanna Koo, who runs the business side of my life and has been responsible for getting all these hundreds of issues out. I want to thank Sean MacIntyre for his contributions on investing. And, of course, I want to thank all my readers, especially those that have taken the time to affirm or challenge my ideas along the way.
