Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Henry wrote:Has to be Boris Johnson.

Unlikely, since although he is my age, his newest wife was born the same year as my DS36. Also, the touring member of Parliament I dated was 6'5" and did 500 push-ups every day and played bass. Still, he was 52 to my 42 (18 years ago, how time flies!) The median age of the men who still text me in the hopes of access to something other than my tuna fish casserole recipe is now 69.5. Silver lining being that their median net worth is likely now north of $3 million. Still, I'm thinking primitive technology/permaculturist maybe 7 years younger than me (kind of weird when 53 seems like robbing the cradle) is the trade I might make once I get into good enough shape to haul large unconscious man out of the woods on my own power.

ETA: The gains to longevity along the spectrum measured by VO2 max are approximately the same at age 60 (3 years extra lifespan) as those provided by simply being of female gender, so there is no way for a rational female to contract with an older male partner at age 60 with expectation of similar lifespan even if he is very fit, and she is very unfit. Ergo, a very fit female at age 60-plus will increasingly need to partner with younger men of reasonable levels of fitness if similar lifespan expectation is one of her filters.

Consequently, the fact that older men with significant financial means frequently choose to partner with women who are younger and fitter than them tends towards creating the mythology of the "gold-digger" due to the fact that all third parties to such a relationship immediately intuit the likelihood of his much earlier demise.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 18, 2025 6:47 am

Also, the touring member of Parliament I dated was 6'5" and did 500 push-ups every day and played bass.

So you were Knockin Bootsy.

@Henry:

No, Bootsy is only 6'2".

So you went with size over performance.

I was watching a video of a Rolling Stones recent performance. Keith and Mick are now both over 80. Brian (27) and Charlie (80) are dead. Bill retired 20 years ago because he didn't want to be playing Honkey Tonk Woman at his current age of 88 and instead collects rich old man type of shit. Ronnie is 77 and still twins for Keith. Keith can still do his day job and seems to enjoy it although he takes spells by sitting down. Keith and Ronnie both wear really bright shirts. Mick still dances and prances convincingly. Keith looks like a paunchy old man who needs to take a nap after the show. Mick is without an ounce of fat and looks like he still picks chicks out of the audience. Ronnie looks like he has entered the hobby stage. My understanding is Mick is all about the nutrition and yoga. His gait is of a much younger man. It is very impressive. Of course, they are supplemented by back up singers and additional band members so they are not pulling 1968 Altamont weight anymore but they are from from the Karaoke stage. I also watched a video of Thomas Sowell being interviewed. He is 94 and remains formidable. I wouldn't want to debate him. Hence the gamut. So I'm going with Mick on the physical Thomas on the mental Keith on the functional and Ronnie on the I'm still alive and need to get out of the house and leaving Bill to his stamp collection. I averaged 9000 steps this month with pilates 2-3 per week and I got under Oku's skin so it's a good start as I head into the terror, boredom and Russian roulette of the great and final indifference.

@Henry:

Yeah, Mick looks pretty damn good for 81, but I think Iggy Pop at 78 might be a more appropriate role model for you (check out his mic move at 3:04.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZES-B5le8

My own elder fitness quest is currently in a bit of a strength training infinite regress due to fact that I stupidly had my new equipment mailed to my former residence which is 1.5 hours away, and as I was driving over there to pick it up, my Smart car blew-up and left me stranded on the side of the expressway. Now I am debating whether I will go carless again, which will likely be a "Yes", because I don't really find driving very much fun, and the walkability score at my new location is 92%. Also, I will then likely become the current *!WINNER!* of the lowest monthly lifestyle expense contest on the ERE forum! And, obviously, walking everywhere will also contribute to the likelihood of winning the contest to which this thread is dedicated.

However, I have made some progress in terms of my waist-to-hip ratio, because both measurements went down 1/2 in. which improved my overall ratio, because math. My resting heart rate also went down 6 bpm to 69 bpm, but I think that was mostly due to the fact that I was very sick with respiratory virus when I started measuring. Somewhere in the 60s is pretty typical for me.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 30, 2025 12:55 pm

Yeah, Mick looks pretty damn good for 81, but I think Iggy Pop at 78 might be a more appropriate role model for you (check out his mic move at 3:04.)

You're right. Just replace that mic with a cucumber.

Well, I have hit a new low that will hopefully be my final bottom. I asked one of my semi-ex-poly-partners if he could pick up my weight plates that I had shipped to wrong address, because he will be driving by there this weekend, and he implied that it is a good thing that I am doing weight-training, because I was starting to resemble a human in the movie Wall-E. However, he also directly propositioned me for sex within 5 minutes of making that comment. So, since this sort of thing has been a continuing source of confusion for me, I asked an AI whether the humans in Wall-E were sometimes regarded as sexually attractive, but the AI was apparently programmed to not answer this kind of question. However, it appears to me that the Wall-E humans all basically have the same shape whether they are male or female, so although I would agree that "rounded" would accurately describe my current shape, I do not believe that "asexual" would accurately describe my current shape. All of the Wall-E humans appear to have a Waist-to-Hip ratio of at least 1.2 while my Waist-to-Hip ratio is still below .8 (although less below than previously due to both numbers increasing.) Basically, I've got too much of that Anna Nicole Smith, Kirstie Alley, Janet Jackson kind of problem going on. However, luckily, I never have to dress up in sequined gowns and heels and tons of make-up, so more of a low-key up and down in size of plain black t-shirt and cargo pants version.

Anyways, I do somehow feel that my physical appearance is evidence of the fact that I am likely less of a genetically frugal human and more of a memetically frugal human. IOW, my tendencies towards not spending money are more second-order rational than first-order innate neurochemical basis. It's also the case that I still enjoyed shopping at malls until around age 15, whereas there are other humans, such as my INTP son, who pretty much never enjoyed shopping. Actually, I would say that I still enjoy shopping, but I now only "shop" in ways that do not require spending money or are actually towards making money. For example, foraging for berries or buying used books for resale. IOW, I believe that genetic-basis frugal humans are most likely to be naturally skinny men like Jacob or my DS36 or my multi-millionaire friend. I suppose we could do a forum survey to determine if this is true-ish.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Sat May 10, 2025 11:02 am

I asked an AI whether the humans in Wall-E were sometimes regarded as sexually attractive, but the AI was apparently programmed to not answer this kind of question.

Or maybe the AI was laughing so hard it had NVDA chips coming out of its nose.

Well, on the upside, as long as I keep an ESTJ type in my poly-circle, I will have less need to prompt my AI companion into absolute/brutalist mode.

If I win this longevity challenge, I'm looking at another 30 years, and I really don't know how I am going to keep my narrative coherent* when I am already jaded to the point of being amused by the fact that my Needful Monthly Spending is now down to $0, because my semi-"ex" just bought me a new phone and put me on his phone bill. How old and chubby will I have to become to no longer be able to function at the spoiled margin of my lifestyle as something like unto the more "sugary" side of Lentil Baby? I really hold the sexual dichotomy practice writings for female intended audience of David Deida (theoretically a Level Turquoise guru) somewhat to blame for my behavior; I think he didn't fully anticipate the possibility that they would fall into the hands of a female with same personality type as Bugs Bunny Playing At Slacker Econ Grad Student.

Your man may be moved to cherish and protect you in a certain way, not because you are weak, but because you are radiant, precious, and beautiful to him. He knows when you have to go out and compete in the masculine-dominated business world, you will have to dampen your radiance and take up the sword, to some extent. He may want to relieve you of this obligation.

I'm thinking by the time I am 90, my level of "radiant, precious, and beautiful" might be down to maybe just getting handed an extra pudding cup from the guy half-nodding off in the wheelchair next to me as he grasps on to whatever flesh still loosely clings to my thigh with his gnarled bony hand. Dunno.

Anyways, the good health metric news is that my hair has now grown back out to the length of my waist even though I abuse it with boxed blonde bleaching. When my Crohn's Disease was at its most raging, my hair was breaking off and falling out every time I washed it, so this is a happy realization. OTOH, I think I am now too old to wear my hair down like a Barbie doll, so the longer length just gives me more options for braided Mrs. Santa Claus coronet bun arrangements.

*ETA: Actually, I do know how to keep my narrative coherent. I just have to reboot my spreadsheet which makes clear how my adult feminine energy facilitates flow of resources from Grouchy Old Men to Poor Babies while at least Doing No Harm Ecologically.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Mon May 12, 2025 8:04 am

If I win this longevity challenge, I'm looking at another 30 years, and I really don't know how I am going to keep my narrative coherent*

The narrative remains coherent as long as you don't change your story. If it deus ex machinas, well that's another story that could create another story but it was not of your doing. I have reached the point that I realize I will not experience another step change unless I reach an age where I'm too old to live it out. There will be no second home, no yacht, and no Ferrari. I am a millionaire but not in the Elmer Fudd sense. So in some ways, this is it between me and the material world. We have reached our end point. I will remain on the poor side of US rich for the duration. So for better and worse, it's a wrap in that regard. The question is longevity, if I will have it, and how to make it more than longevity if I end up with it. Longevity for longevity sakes seems like a wash, at least for the old stupid asses I'm forced to fucking deal with on a daily basis. Is having a few cars in your driveway on Mother's Day when you're fucking 90 worth being fucking 90?

I wonder if demented old folk would benefit from acid trips or magic mushrooms on a regular basis? Provided in safe quantities under clinical supervision. It would be therapeutic for them to imagine they were a bald eagle soaring across the mountains rather than stuck in some underfunded government facility in South Shields. Cantankerous old men could be encouraged to get stoned, which would make the carers job easier.

chenda wrote: ↑

Mon May 12, 2025 11:41 am

I wonder if demented old folk would benefit from acid trips or magic mushrooms on a regular basis? Provided in safe quantities under clinical supervision. It would be therapeutic for them to imagine they were a bald eagle soaring across the mountains rather than stuck in some underfunded government facility in South Shields. Cantankerous old men could be encouraged to get stoned, which would make the carers job easier.

In the demented care home I visited patients were often under involuntary care. They were force fed the familiar opiods (morphine, oxycodon, fentalyl, tramadol and so on.) They don't like this, but as you say, it makes caring for them easier.

One of the livelier patients, a 94 year old woman, would keep the medicine under her tongue and spit it out in a plant pot after the nurses left. This came to light when the plant started to die

I'd be amenable to $20 crack whores blowing smoke up my ass. Demented Henry gives no fucks.

Henry wrote: So in some ways, this is it between me and the material world.

The magic of compound interest might yet lift you to level of arranging for your family office and foundation. However, beyond all that, there is still the possibility of change or growth in the subjective and inter-subjective to consider. Part of the reason why at this point in my life my narrative seems rather incoherent is that it is smeared or pinball game fluctuating along the spectrum from Level Blue to Level Turquoise value meme (maybe even down to Level Red on a very rough day) and likely centered at Post-Modern Appreciation for the Ridiculous. For example, if I were to make a statement like "I really don't care about money." , there would be at least two frameworks from which I would be speaking my truth, and another two frameworks from which I would not. The entire statement that would most accurately express my current perspective would require several qualifying clauses. And it is possible that I might add a couple more clauses before I hit 90 and/or collapse the whole mess into something more elegant.

Right now I am simultaneously fighting pretty hard in my eNTP juvenile masculine energy (the boy who sez the emperor has no clothes) against this Level Turquoise Ken Wilber Vudu B.S., while also having experienced how well it "works" in my feminine energy for a couple decades now. The odd thing being that I was exposed to the practice before doing all the reading. When the topic of Spiral Dynamics first came up on this forum, I did not realize that it was directly related to the sexual-dichotomy practices I had earlier encountered. This fact that I hit the same juncture from two different paths adds to my feeling that the direction of development/growth in adulthood is inevitable/predictable. I don't like this thought. I want more options. I want for there to be more "everything" than Wilber describes in his Theory of Everything. However, personal ambition at Level Orange is way too boring, too small of a problem, to compete with the lure of Level Turquoise.

chenda wrote:I wonder if demented old folk would benefit from acid trips or magic mushrooms on a regular basis?

My much older ESTP BF asked me to get him some magic mushrooms (one of my housemates at the time was a young Phish follower) for his 70th birthday, so he could celebrate by wandering through his very well maintained wooded acreage butt naked. I only recently learned, upon reading his obituary, that it was actually his 75th birthday he was celebrating. In his dating profile, he had set his age as 59, but he copped to 69 after we met in person (still making himself 5 years younger than true age!) At one point he told me that the reason why he lied was that all the women who popped up when he put in his true age looked like Barbara Bush. His ex-wife who was still in love with him and co-executor of family trust with him and even stayed with him when her house on the side of a mountain had its access blocked by snow, looked much more like Diane Keaton. She stalked me at a library sale I was attending on one occasion, and this contributed to my choice to break up with him. Although the actual precipitating event was the occasion he could not be bothered to help me when I was having car trouble.

Acts of Service is tied with Physical Touch for my primary love language, so I tend to become somewhat angry and think "Useless!" when I theoretically have a male partner, but have to deal with fixing my own car and/or I am not getting laid. OTOH, somebody telling me that I am still gorgeous to him (Words of Affirmation LL5) and buying me a new phone (but refurbished, and only after looking at Consumer Reports, because frugal at Millionaire Next Door level) and paying for my phone service (Gifts LL4) because my old IPhone 6 can't even run the Uber app anymore, and I decided to become car-free again, and he doesn't want to be bothered with driving me home, but he feels bad if I have to ride the bus for an hour on Mother's Day, works okay for me too, but only within context where the sex is also very good and the Quality Time (LL3) is adequate. (His first wife was 10 years older than him (brief marriage in his early 20s), and he told me when he recently found a recent picture of her on the internet, she now looks like Barbara Bush.)

So, Barbara Bush is kind of the icon for a woman looking too old for Gen-X Henry, my Silent Generation ESTP BF, and my Boomer "ex." My theory is that she became an icon for "too-old" mostly because she looked so much older than George Sr. at mid-life. If you put her on top of a late-life wedding cake with Wilford Brimley, she looks much better. This is why I don't grok women who feel younger by being with significantly younger men. Every time I have attempted dating a significantly younger man, I have ended up having moments of feeling like the Crypt Keeper as well as feeling like a Cradle Snatcher. Although when everybody in the room is past the age of "could easily be a grandpa/grandma", level of fitness and/or preservation due to luck or craft might come more into play.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Tue May 13, 2025 8:31 am

The magic of compound interest might yet lift you to level of arranging for your family office and foundation. However, beyond all that, there is still the possibility of change or growth in the subjective and inter-subjective to consider. Part of the reason why at this point in my life my narrative seems rather incoherent ...So, Barbara Bush is kind of the icon for a woman looking too old for Gen-X Henry

(1) Our will is done. And I think the Ghost of Christmas Future knows that if it showed up when I was in my nightshirt, I would drag it to the street and curb stomp its ephemeral ass. My point is, I don't give a financial shit about anyone except my wife and myself and there will not be a change of heart. And I am proud to say, I never managed another human being. I never had a thirst for that type of power. I don't think people would listen to me any ways because I curse too fucking much and people make a big fucking deal about that shit;

(2) I probably understand what the fuck you are going on about at a 50%-75% clip but the narrative has remained coherently incoherent. Our internal complexity is known in totality only to ourselves;

(3) I was talking to someone recently that despite living in a world where we are extending people's lives like they are appliance warranties, there seem to be less and less grandma and grandpa looking people walking around. Barara Bush is probably the last grandma icon we will have and I"m not going anywhere with grandma.

Henry wrote:Barara Bush is probably the last grandma icon we will have

Yes, you may be right. I had to pull back to Aunt Bee for an example of somebody I semi-wish current society would allow me to relax into appearance-wise. No, sorry, tough luck, 7Wannabe5, even though you are old enough to biologically be a great-great-grandmother in primitive times, you have lived into the 21st century, so you are stuck with Madonna (age 66), Brooke Shields (age 59), Halle Berry (age 58), and Jennifer Lopez (age 55) as reigning icons of what somebody your age might aspire to appearance-wise.

Barbara Bush might be near last example of somebody famous enough for common reference who allowed her shape, skin, hair color, and style to coalesce at "Grandma." One could even construct a table delineating the correlation of Cultural Milieu with which (if any) of these 4 aspects of Grandma would still be most likely to be allowed to manifest. For example, I am somewhat operating in self-aware defiance of my core cultural milieu with my Trailer Trash Barbie box-blonde hair color, and also by allowing my figure to expand towards the chubby/voluptuous; the "chubby-voluptuous" being more acceptable than the Trailer-Trash-Barbie hair, because my core cultural milieu does not tolerate (public) fat-shaming. And, actually, my hair-color is maybe a couple shades towards the more acceptable than Trailer Trash Barbie, because after my sister told me I had the same hair color as the POTUS, I went back to using the slightly more expensive brand with a more consistently ashy toner. And, of course, my has-been-locked-in-a-library-for-40 years skin-tone would also prohibit identifying me as member of milieu most likely to still visit tanning salons.

@7w5 - were you able to source such mushrooms?

There's a resident in the nursing home who still looks pretty good for her age. Remarkably unlined, thick head of white hair and would have been a stunning looking women in her younger days. She's pretty mobile as well but I think she has early onset dementia. Frankly she looks like a visitor, which is a goal we can all aspire to.

chenda wrote: were you able to source such mushrooms?

Yes, but they weren't very good/effective. However, he was a pretty serious pot-head and drinker, so not like altered states were new experience for him. He was also a very driven work-hard/party-hard individual; sort of human who works two jobs, plays basketball, attends grad school, chops wood, hangs out at the bar and the race track, all on the same day, so got clean and sober at one point, but then resumed all his habits once retired. He wouldn't believe me when I told him I can't handle pot, so I took a couple hits one time with him, and the next morning he was like, "Huh, you weren't exaggerating.", but he would still attempt to blow some of his smoke my way before we had sex, or pour me a second glass of wine with dinner. So, we could only ever last about 3 days in each other's company before our habit-scapes would need to devolve.

My point here being that almost all the old humans who are still alive in the U.S. are young enough to potentially have been fairly serious drug users in their youth in the 60s and 70s, and if they want shrooms or pot or whatever they will generally be able to find it through their own sources.

My mother still looks pretty good for 85 in terms of unlined face and thick head of hair, and she is still sharp mentally. However, her lack of mobility definitely marks her as "resident" rather than "visitor." I keep rudely trying to get her to remember how mobile she was at my age, so I can have basis for comparison.

Warren Buffet has dropped some statements on his thought process behind his recent retirement announcement. It was a combination of the physical and mental: balance, memory, eye sight and possibly reading comprehension. He said he didn't start feeling old until he was 90 but once it kicked in it was irreversible. He claims he still retains the capabilities to transact at the macro levels he has in the past. He is still going to the office and not watching soap operas because his interests have not changed. So it appears he will drop dead at his desk pursuing his singularity of purpose which of course possesses an astonishing comprehensiveness. Charlie got to 99, Warren still kicking at 94. Probably something there, notwithstanding the filthy rich thing,