50 things to do before you’re 50

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Last Updated on 24th July 2020

If I had a Pound for every article I’d read titled ’30 things to do before you’re 30′ … well I’d have about £8 by now. However I’ve passed the acceptance criteria for this ’30’ list, and also the far fewer ’40 before 40′ blog posts. With this in mind I decided it was about time a ’50 things to do before you’re 50′ article reared its middle-aged head.

So here goes!

1-50. Do [legally] whatever you like … and visit wherever you like … whenever you like!

Wot no ’50 before 50′ list?

You would have thought reaching an older age (42) would have given me a greater number of “things to do” and the opportunity to write a much more exhaustive article? Well quite the opposite in fact. I’ve now read enough of them to realise that, inspiring and enjoyable to read as they are, there’s no rulebook to life. It isn’t a checkbox exercise to do what everybody else thinks they should be doing by a certain age.

Is this because I’ve had the good fortune to do a lot of them already though? Possibly, but on the whole the older I get the more I appreciate things anyway. As it happens most of the “bucket list” items (swimming with dolphins, bungy jumping, and running the NYC Marathon) were done in my 30s. Would it have been better to have done them all in my 20s? Maybe, but then again maybe not! And anyway, we’ll now never know.

Now some things are better in your 20s?

Ok – so it’s probably better to work on an Australian fruit farm picking strawberries all day long in your 20s rather than your 40s. Both for your lower back and for your relationship. I can’t imagine your wife and 2.4 children being too happy if one day you say. “G’day family – I’m off to Oz for 6 months. Sort out the mortgage as best you can and I’ll catch you later“. Aside from the working Visa aspect if you’re 45 with no family why not bugger off and do it anyway? Rent out your house, palm your cat off onto someone, and gift your favourite houseplant to a neighbour.

Give less of a stuff!

But all said and done the older I get, the less I care about what should get done, and by when. Ultimately I give “less of a stuff” about what other people think too. Insomuch that I completely agree with you if you don’t give a stuff about what I think above either!

Not quite what you were expecting when Googling ’50 things to do before you’re 50′? … then add some suggestions in the comments below 🙂 Or read my similarly “meh” post on ‘country counting‘!

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