At 57, I Realized Two Things — and the First One Is That Nobody Cares

I was thinking about an old mortgage chart I was shown years ago when I bought my first apartment in England. The advisor walked me through how the early years of a mortgage are mostly interest, and only later does the balance shift toward paying down the principal.

That chart came back to me recently in a way I didn't expect. Because life works the same way — and somewhere in your 50s, the graph flips.

In this episode I sit with two realizations that have been turning over in my head since I lost my job at 56. The first is about time, and how losing a paycheck has a strange way of making the clock visible for the first time. The second is about other people, and the slightly uncomfortable truth that nobody really cares what you do — and why that turns out to be one of the most freeing things you can ever hear.

Whether you're navigating job loss, thinking about reinvention, sitting on an idea you've been afraid to start, or just wondering what the next chapter looks like, this one's for you.

If any of this resonates, come find me at empoweroverfifty.com. I just put up a message board because I want this to be a conversation, not a broadcast. There are also free resources and tools on the site if you're at the start of your own next chapter.

Until next week.

— Max

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Begins with your old fifty. You find your fun in strong money. Brand new story. I'm dying your golden glory. The world is your day.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Well, welcome back to Empower Over 50 podcast. This is where I get the opportunity basically to uh to go into a bit more detail about what's been going on this week and in particular this week's videos. Now, just a quick reminder: please go and visit empowerover50.com where you'll find the um community area where I encourage people to sign up. It's completely free. Uh, you just pop in your email address and create a password, and then you'll get a verification code, put that in, and you're in. That's it. And there is a message board there which is still still young, but it's slowly getting traction. And also uh message of the day. And I really am trying to create a community here for us all to be able to talk to each other by posting messages and replies, and you'll find me in there too daily. So again, visit empowerover50.com. Now let's move straight on to this week's videos, and it started off actually on Monday. Um firstly, um, both videos actually this week. I decided to take a completely different approach to the to them, and I took them outdoors. Monday I went to the beach, and it was a glorious day, and yes, I was sorely tempted not to even film. I thought it's too nice to film, I don't want to do this, but I did it anyway, and I filmed some beautiful B-roll of the uh beach and the ocean, and sadly I had to film some A-roll of me. But anyway, Monday's video all started, came from an idea that I had Monday morning, and it just kind of popped into my head as I woke up. And it's an analogy of um I bought an apartment over 30 years ago now in England, and when I was going through the whole mortgage setup, I was shown a graph basically of show being taught how a mortgage works, and that is you know, when you start paying a mortgage, you're basically paying the interest, and there's very little uh of the principal actually being paid off because the banks want to make money. Now, as time goes on, the interest begins to lower and the principal begins to increase. So at around, I don't know, year 10, year 15, depending on your mortgage, depending on how long your mortgage is, and all that, it flips. You start actually paying more principal and less interest. So, my analogy was well, it's time and work, and I use the interest as time and the principal as work. And when you're younger, you've got life completely ahead of you. I mean, you don't think about death particularly or retirement, even. I mean, some people do, and they're the smart ones. That that wasn't me. Um, but you think you've got all the time in the world, and and that's great, but you get older and you get into your 50s, and then suddenly you start realizing maybe you're spending too much time at work because now it's whole the whole thing's flipped. You're paying more time at work, but less free time because you realize that actually time is finite, you don't have all the time in the world, and that can be a sobering thought. Now, you might get that realization in different ways. For me, it was when I lost my job last year. Prior to losing my job, I hadn't really given too much thought about my age, if I would if I were honest. You know, one of those quirky things when you get into your 50s or even your 60s or 70s is you know, you still kind of think similar ways to when you were like 20 or 25 or 30. You don't feel different in your mind. Now your body, well, that can be a whole different thing. As I was joking uh not long ago, I was on the floor picking something up, and I'm like, wow, I did not think this out. I got onto the floor without a good plan on how I'm gonna get back up again. But that's what happens in life, and then when I lost my job and I started to having to look at the job market, and I'm seeing and I'm reading and I'm hearing all these things about you know, it ain't easy when you get into your 50s looking for another job, it really hit home to me, and I'm like, okay. Now, my thoughts are that if you know, if you're in a situation where maybe you've lost your job, or you're even thinking about this whole thing about time and and and work, you should really consider start or start considering thinking, well, can I afford to buy myself more time? And when I say buy myself more time, you can't buy time. Once you've used that time, it's gone. You've lost it, you can't get it back. But if you're not working, or if you can cut back cut back on your work, you can get time back. That would be the other way to do it. That's the only way to do it. And now that of course depends on your finances, and I appreciate there are plenty of people out there who aren't in that situation. Um, they have to work, simple as that, and I I get that, and my heart really goes out to to you. Um, but for others, you know, maybe there's a way. Now, for me, when I lost my job, that wasn't a part of my plan. My plan was to work until I was 60 and and then retire. That was my plan. But as so often is the case nowadays, people are finding themselves in that same situation that I was in. They lost their job prior to be hitting that age when they were planning on retiring, and there's a shortfall basically. They don't have the money to retire completely, but there are options, you know. Maybe you can work part-time uh to make up the difference, for example. Maybe you can downsize, maybe if you've got two cars, sell one of them. Maybe there's ways around it to make it work. There's another way too, and this brings me on now neatly to today's video, Thursday's video, and that is starting a side hustle or doing something on your own. But one of the things that can hinder you wanting to, not wanting, but actually doing, and it hindered me, is being concerned about well, what would somebody think if I did this? You know? So I'll give you an example. My example was the easiest one to give. I started a YouTube channel 16 months ago, and I must have been watching YouTube video tutorials for a year or more because I wanted to start a YouTube channel. So this is before I lost my job. I've been wanting to start a YouTube channel. I'm a creative person. I studied music and sound engineering back when I was at college, and I really wanted to do this, and um, but there were a number of things that stopped me. But the main thing probably was the worry about was about what people would think. You know, what would they think of them meeting a YouTube channel? What are you gonna do the channel on? You've never done this before. What experience have you got? And all these kind of questions that you ask yourself, and that kind of stops you more than anything else. I mean, for me, for me there were other things too, but they were YouTube specific, like going on camera. I wasn't comfortable originally going on camera at all, and it shows if you watch the earlier videos. But the main thing was the worry about what people would think. And you get the realization when you're older, and if you haven't realized it, then you're at the right place. Because I'm gonna tell you right now nobody cares. And I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean that in a good way, but actually better than good, a great way. It is your superpower, and knowing it is your super weapon, along with something else that I'll come to in a second. But when you realize that nobody cares, it is freeing, so freeing. And the reason why nobody cares, and obviously I'm not including your your partner, your spouse, your immediate family, I'm talking about people you know, your friends or your work colleagues. They're too busy in their own lives to care about what you're doing. That is the the truth of it. They're too busy, they don't care. And if they see something, they might think of something for a second, and then it's gone. They really don't care. And once you get out that into your head, everything becomes so much easier, so much quicker. Now, the second thing that I alluded to earlier, along with knowing that nobody cares, because it is great and it is your superpower, it's your super weapon, the other one is your age. Yes, your age is your other superpower, another super weapon. Because with age, as the old saying goes, comes experience, knowledge, and my favorite one, because this comes free of charge, you don't get it when you're 20 years old, but you get it when you get older, and it's called the bullshit meter. You know bullshit from a mile away, you can smell it, you can taste it, you know it. And uh having that freedom of knowing that nobody cares, knowing that you have all of this experience and knowledge in your head. You can use that and you can use it to make money. Or if you don't need money, maybe it's to start a hobby that you know you've always wanted to do. Could be anything. I know. Maybe you've always wanted to take flying lessons or snorkeling, whatever it is, do it because life is way too short. Way too short. And you know, I was I should have been in England this week, actually. Uh a friend of mine from high school passed away a few weeks ago, and he was my age, and uh completely out the blue. I got a message from another friend, from a mutual friend, telling me that he had died, and I was like, oh, holy shit, you know, um wow. And it really brings it home to you that you know life, you know, is not finite. There is an expiration date, and you never know when that's gonna be. Now I I was gonna try and attend his funeral, but to be honest with you, between finances and other things, plus I hadn't spoken to him in 40 years, uh, although we were friends on on Facebook, I I decided not to go. But the realization was no less. And then that brings you into another area that I haven't covered quite yet, along with age and not and and not caring about what people think, is your health. You know, I follow a YouTuber guy called an English guy, and I recommend you check out his channel, um level 50 Lifestyle, and he talks about the go-go years. And those are the years basically between say 50, 55 to like 65. You know, it's it's not safe to say, but there's a higher probability you're still gonna have reasonably good health during those years, and those are your go-go years, that's the time when you can travel and you can do stuff because you're still young enough to do it. But since you start getting into the 65 and older bracket, that's when things can get dicey. But let's face it, you know, things can get dicey at 45, let alone 55. So while you've got your health, and if you are in a position where you could possibly either retire or semi-retetire and start a side hustle or do something that you've always wanted to do, you're better off doing it because you, as I mentioned earlier, you can't get that time back once you've once it's gone, you've lost it. That's it. But you can exchange work time for personal time, so that's really important, and that's really what I was covering uh this week on the channel. And um, I I I really hope you go and check out the videos. I'll leave links in the um show notes below for you, along with the link for the empireover50.com website. And again, I do really hope you'll take a look at the website, particularly the community page. As I mentioned, it's completely free, and you can just go in, you sign up, and the reason why we ask you to sign up is it's a prevention to try and stop bots from getting in. That's all. I want it to be a space where people can talk freely and openly, not just to share their concerns or their worries, but also share their wins and you know check in every day. There's a message of the day in there, and maybe you can help somebody out, or if you've got a concern or worry, somebody can help you out. And failing that, because we're still young, the message port is still young, I'm in there every day. So if you're not comfortable with leaving a comment in the uh in the show in the comments below, you can go there and it's gonna be secure, and you're gonna be with people um in the same situation, and I'll be there too. So again, I thank you all so very, very much for listening to the Empire Over 50 podcast, and I'll look forward to talking to you soon. So, until the next time, thank you, and cheers.