Having kids / buying a house / saving for retirement - anything else?

August 29, 2015 11:34 AM

I am a Worrier who likes to think things through in advance - so what can I expect in my 30s?

I will be 30 in the next couple of months and one characteristic I have recently learnt about myself is that I deal better with life events if I have thought about them happening in advance. Somehow makes me feel like I saw it coming anyway.

Some recent examples of such things in my late twenties:

- friends all getting married, and having kids if they were already married

- parents being more visibly older and frail

- dealing with wills and powers of attorney for older relatives

- between my contemporaries and I at work we actually have some pretty serious responsibilities and our choices have an impact in the real world

- keeping up with current and new music isn't something that just 'happens', so I have to make an effort

Realising that these events were coming and just a part of the procession of getting older really helped me deal with them.

So what can I expect in my 30s?

I am sure there will be more of the above, but would be very interested in what specific events MeFites have experienced. I have read the classic buzzfeed style articles but am after some more specific things that happen to you, rather than observations.

Relevant info - I am a married male living in london, professional job, currently no kids, do a variety of sports to stay physically active.

(And yes I fully appreciate answer 1 could well be 'expect some unexpected things to happen' , I am also working on dealing with that, but would like to know some specific things as well!)

Thanks in advance.

posted by Albondiga to Human Relations (15 answers total)

Your metabolism will slow down and you will have to reduce your meals to keep up your drinking pace and not gain lots of weight.

You will get offered a job that much better meets your emotional needs/goals, but you will struggle with accepting it because it pays 25% less than your current soul sucking job that pays the mortgage, the kid's tuition and for a stressful vacation once a year.
posted by AugustWest at 11:41 AM on August 29, 2015 [4 favorites]

You'll probably start to notice a few startling signs of aging in yourself/your partner, and maybe think about your own eventual mortality in a way that you haven't before.
posted by three_red_balloons at 11:42 AM on August 29, 2015 [11 favorites]

You'll see your friends' kids growing up, and come to understand your own childhood in a new way, and see more what your own parents went through in parenting, and how young they (and all the adults you knew as a kid) were.

This is more late-30s maybe; you'll start to lose friends and colleagues who you think of as only a little older. You'll start to experience time as more compressed (holy crap has it really been five years since ____ ?), and come to terms with the idea that you're not intrinsically a young person and all the aging stuff you see your slightly-older friends going through is stuff that will come to you in your turn.

It will be more important to actually exercise, eat less, floss, all that good stuff.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:02 PM on August 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

And you'll be more able to own the tradeoffs you've made and embrace the life you actually have, rather than being balled up with worry about what-if-I-had-done-differently.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:03 PM on August 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

You will think you are getting old but then later in life realize it was still youth.
posted by D.C. at 12:04 PM on August 29, 2015 [18 favorites]

You will look at pictures of yourself in your 20s and think "holy shit, I was HOT, and not NEARLY as fat as I thought I was." Unless, of course, you're the kind of person who gets the carpe diem sort of mortality-realization and gets into working out until you become the fittest you've been in your life.

You will wonder why you haven't travelled as much as you thought you would. You will make plans to travel. If you're smart, you'll set up a travel savings account and throw money at it when you can, after feeding your obligatory retirement account, rainy day fund, etc.

You will find yourself increasingly comfortable with previously-unimaginable large amounts of debt.

You will recognize the benefits of long-term planning. You will find yourself making long-term plans without thinking of them as long-term.

You will find yourself questioning the quality of IKEA furniture, and being bewildered as to where else there is to shop for furniture that doesn't cost a small fortune. If you find the answer to this, please memail me, because damn, I'm closing in on 40 and still haven't figured it out. Cost Plus World Market, maybe?

You will question why, when you haven't really gained any weight, clothes you've worn for years look different on you.

You will not relate to any of this and feel like you're still the same as you were in your 20s, until you try hanging out with 20something coworkers in social situations. Then you will be glad you aren't the same as you were in your 20s.
posted by erst at 12:37 PM on August 29, 2015 [6 favorites]

If you are male your hair will start to crawl down the back of your head. Probably due to being embarrassed about what you did to it in your twenties.
posted by srboisvert at 12:50 PM on August 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ever get drunk and have sex with your spouse?



That 'and' may well become an 'or' as you enter your 30's.
posted by ftm at 1:52 PM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

erst: I have found several places, mostly wood specialty furniture stores, that have tent sales and individual pieces which are quite affordable. Despite the fact that their regular prices are insane. If you are in the greater LA area memail me and I'll drop you a name.
posted by bswinburn at 1:53 PM on August 29, 2015

When you injure yourself, it will take longer to recover. Not a huge amount longer - just a bit longer. But you'll notice it. This is also the case for staying up too late and treating your body poorly with junk food, not enough exercise, etc.

Probably at least a handful of your friends who got married in their 20s will be divorced by the time you're all in your mid-30s. I have some friends on their second marriages and that's a bit of a head trip, especially when you've been invited to *both* weddings.
posted by sutel at 2:55 PM on August 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

Have a conversation with your elders about where their important papers are. When my grandfather died, his stuff was all over the place. He had accounts at numerous banks, safety deposit box keys with no list of what they belonged to etc. Even just a list of which banks he had accounts with would have helped!

I remember also bragging to my father-in-law that my mom had all HER stuff organized, and always said my great-uncle had it (he is a lawyer). FIL smugly turns to me and says 'really, and how old is he?' Um, 87ish? So, what is the name of his firm, if I ever had to call them to get my mother's stuff? Darned if I knew...

My point is, you don't have to get into itemized lists of accounts just yet, maybe. But even just a conversation about where their stuff is would help you.
posted by JoannaC at 8:19 PM on August 29, 2015

For me and for many of my friends, our late thirties was when we realized that we weren't as clever as we all thought we were in our twenties, and that we were probably never going to be superstars in our fields.

(Sorry if that's depressing. For what it's worth, in my early forties, I think I've finally come around to a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses, and I'm slowly figuring out how to work with those strengths and weaknesses to build a satisfying career for myself. This seems to be a common pattern. So there is a light at the end of the tunnel.)
posted by yankeefog at 5:38 AM on August 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Career identity crisis: I learned I cannot deal with being in an office anymore and am giving up a rather large salary to go back to school. Mid thirties. Money is NOT everything.
posted by floweredfish at 8:51 AM on August 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

i decided to wait until i'd finished my degree to start having children, be sensible. Not. I tried to get pregnant for ten years. Turns out i had early infertility. By that time i'd left it too late to adopt because i would've needed to buy a forever-house 5 years before (short version). So i always say, if female have a fertility test. It tells you how many eggs you've got left and if you release enough of the right hormones and costs about £200, which is a lot of money but this lets you plan your future - bearing in mind, you may take a year for fertility treatment to work (or longer), then pregnancy, then gap, then second if you want, plus need to plan financially - so knowing in advance would be well worth it - if you found out you had only half a dozen chances left, that's worth knowing, if you had 2 decades' worth, ditto. I think!
from my experience: in your 30s, you have to get done all the things you could've done in your 20s but didn't; 40s are too late. But, i'm so negative. I made loads of plans and followed them and they all fell through!
posted by maiamaia at 2:16 PM on August 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Some of your friends' marriages and relationships are going to end. I mean, this definitely happens in your 20s as well, depending on the demographics of your friend group, but for me it was more accelerated in my 30s.
posted by mskyle at 5:29 PM on August 30, 2015