What happens when you hit 50

A rapid downhill slide, and not a good one.
 
Actually you can sign up a few months early. Margy's a year older than I am. One day she says "I don't get what all this stuff I got from AARP is." I told her I signed her up. I wanted the discounts and as a spouse I could get a card on her account.
 
So I turned 49 end of Feb 2017. What happens when I hit 50.

What can I expect in Life?

You will turn invisible to girls, unless you are filthy, filthy rich......:lol::lol::lol:

I needed glasses at 52. I went from passing the vision test with flying colors to dead in the water without glasses in 2 years.

And of course my younger than me wife will always tell our wait person that I am a senior citizen and ask for a discount.
 
When you check your messages, an increasing number will deal with school buddies who kicked the bucket, mostly from heart disease.

From my vantage point, what you have to expect after 50 are 'diseases that kill you dead'. You have 1 year to get in good shape health and lifestyle wise, so when you are the one who keels over at a baseball game, people can say 'such a suprise, evilpilot was always in such good shape'.
 
A colonoscopy.

And a treadmill test.

And you start being surprised more and more when you find out people who look old as Methuselah are actually younger than you.

But take heart; at 50 you still have five years before you start being solicited by memory care and assisted living facilities.
 
If you have a family member, parent etc who had colon cancer then you will need a colonoscopy right away and every five years minimum. Fifty is the new thirty so you are still a kid.
 
My then Dr, who was over 50 kept telling me "Enjoy the last of your forties. It's all downhill from here." Had a real gift for encouragement, he did.

Anyway, 50 wasn't a big deal to me. Yes, I did the treadmill and colonoscopy. Then I lost ~70 pounds and felt better than I had in years.

Today, I'm 57, nearly 58 and I've put ~40 lbs back on. (It's my own fault.) Now I can say, yeah it's a bit downhill. I can still do a lot of what I did, but I pay for it longer.

But, as we've seen in other threads, nobody is guaranteed tomorrow, so 50, 60 70, 80, whatever, enjoy what you've got.
 
Generally at 50 you finally have enough money to have a little fun, and enough energy to enjoy life.
It wasn't till 60 that I began feeling the effects of age, and I think that had to do with my life-long weight problem.
At 65 I am beginning to feel the effects of arthritis and I am finding that no matter how much I work out, I can't lift the weights or do the aerobics I used to. And losing weight is a bigger ***** than ever. So if you are heavy, lose weight now and keep it off.
 
BAhhhh, don't worry about it, the decline is so gradual you barely notice it.
 
You will begin to realize what an amazing thing the brain was.

And then you will promptly forget how amazing your brain was.

You will turn invisible to girls, unless you are filthy, filthy rich......:lol::lol::lol:

And of course my younger than me wife will always tell our wait person that I am a senior citizen and ask for a discount.

And both of these.
 
50? Let's see...

Hell, that was nine years ago. I don't remember what happened.

I barely remember 58.
 
You will turn invisible to girls, unless you are filthy, filthy rich......:lol::lol::lol:

... or you carry a saxophone case. Not sure what it is about a Sax. Nobody ever talks to me while I travel on the airlines (which is completely fine with me). Last week, I picked up an Alto Sax for my daughter and traveled with it in carry-on. Three separate attractive women tried to strike up a conversation with me. I think I need to learn how to play the thing :)
 
50? Let's see...

Hell, that was nine years ago. I don't remember what happened.

I barely remember 58.
Uhh oh! He's losing it! Do you remember your last birthday? What did you have for breakfast? ;)
 
... or you carry a saxophone case. Not sure what it is about a Sax. Nobody ever talks to me while I travel on the airlines (which is completely fine with me). Last week, I picked up an Alto Sax for my daughter and traveled with it in carry-on. Three separate attractive women tried to strike up a conversation with me. I think I need to learn how to play the thing :)

So then there is good sax after 50...
 
50? Let's see...

Hell, that was nine years ago. I don't remember what happened.

I barely remember 58.


Why am I on the computer..??

Why am I typing..??

Who are you people..??

I don't want to buy your cookies, little girl....
 
Once you get over the hill, you start picking up speed..........
 
Once you hit 50, all your friends start looking old, and college students start looking like junior high schoolers.
 
Nothing happens right away. It's insidious. Very gradual decline with maybe some horrible emergencies thrown in (detached retina for me). I'm 60 now and I can look back and see a significant decline since 50. At 50 I still considered myself somewhat sexy and good looking for my age, maybe a MILF even. Now there is no more denying it, I'm a troll, I'm OLD and look it. Things hang lower now, all things, everywhere. Things hurt all the time. Memory, hearing, vision, energy, strength, balance; all are decaying. At 50 most of those were still normal enough I didn't think about them. Now I think about them every day because the loss from what they used to be is becoming stark.

Ten years ago when I was 50 the world was still "mine". Now at 60 it seems the world has changed and left me behind. Culture has become unfamiliar and uncomfortable, I don't like it and I think the young people are doing it all wrong - and I recognize that is a typical old person complaint.

My thinking has slowed. It takes longer to analyze a problem and learning new things takes longer. But paradoxically, wisdom has increased massively. The amount of stuff I have figured out about life in the last ten years is probably equal to what I had figured out the entire first 50 years. But because expressing myself has become slower, and I frequently struggle to find the right word, it appears to young people I'm stupider, when in fact I am seeing vast swathes of reality all over the place to which I know they are blind. But all that wisdom is for naught; youth don't listen to me any more than I listened to wise old people when I was young. Everybody has to make their own mistakes and learn from experience. It's just excruciating to watch them do it.

My advice to someone turning 50 is to concentrate on two things. Plan for retirement, and do your big bucket list items. Do both simultaneously, though they might conflict financially. You don't want to put off either so you need to work them out together.
 
Man, I went to the hair dresser yesterday and after it was over, I surveyed the pile of hair on the floor. I would say it was 60% brown and 40% gray/white. I turned 34 last week. I think I'll be screwed on a few different levels by 50.
 
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