Fiftysomethings with no money? Not me, guv!

This post from Nancy Zimmerman’s Money Coach blog gave me the chills.

Although many of her clients are affluent professionals, she has encountered a “sub-set”: women in their fifties with no money to speak of.

She writes:

Often it’s not for the reason you’d think. It’s not so much about the traditional Waiting for the Man who Never Came as this: they have lived lives based on their ideals, and forgot to include the sexiness of including a solid investment portfolio in the package.

They have pursued their dreams, things like travelling the world to do good, working for causes at low pay, or pursuing passions that didn’t pay off.

Erm, check, check and check.

I don’t mind that I’ll be turning 30 in a few months’ time, but it does mean that 50 doesn’t seem as far away as it used to. I used to presume that people got richer as they got older; now, the idea that I could be skint as retirement approaches terrifies me.

I have decided that one of my aims, over the next year, is to smash the likelihood of fiftysomething pauperdom into smithereens.