Making the most of life after 50

It’s easy to spend 30 or 40 years planning, thinking and doing for others ... instead of yourself. But suddenly you reach middle age. Then what? Two friends came up with a plan for the second half of their lives. Kate Klimo and Buffy Shutt, were invited on TODAY to discuss their new book, “Coming of Age ... All Over Again.” Here’s an excerpt:

Introduction
It was then Buffy realized that the AARP membership card — however unexpected and even unwelcome — was a sort of early signal telling her that if she couldn't affect her parents' choices, at least she could have some control over her own. Buffy realized that now was the time to start planning the second half of her life.

And whenever something really important comes along, Buffy calls her best friend, Kate. She told Kate, "We need to figure out this getting old thing now."

Kate started laughing. Only the day before, her eighty-four-year-old mother had deposited a brand-new pair of $10,000 hearing aids into a bowl of foaming Polident.

"Count me in," Kate said.

Who are we, anyway?
We're two women in our fifties, best friends since our first day of college more than thirty years ago. Kate, a children's book publisher with three young adult sons and a husband who teaches college, lives in upstate New York. Buffy, a movie and television producer with a background in marketing, two young adult children, and a husband who writes for movies and television, lives in the Los Angeles area. In spite of the continent that lies between us, we have kept in touch over the years with visits, e-mails, and phone calls. Although we live on opposite coasts, we like to think that our friendship has thrived in an imaginary, heart-warmed place that lies somewhere in between. We call it Our Own Private Iowa. ("Idaho" was already taken.)

Springboard Press

Over the years, we've kept ourselves busy in that Iowa, talking constantly and staying in touch with what happens in each other's life. And let's just say that we've been visiting Our Own Private Iowa a lot more frequently in recent years, as we've found ourselves dealing with a whole new set of midlife issues and trying to figure them out together.

So that makes us experts?
Other than in our chosen fields, we don't consider ourselves experts. But on the subject of living the second half of our lives, who needs experts? We figure we've made it through the first half having learned enough about ourselves and the world to make the second half of our lives the better half. And after doing the research and study that led to the writing of this book, we think of ourselves as being something much more useful, something we all need to be as we start to think about living the second half of our lives: prepared. Being properly prepared will make you the first and best expert on how to live the second half of your life with style, wit, and a dash of imagination.

Ready, set, research!
One week after that fateful "AARP card incident," Kate happened to come out to the West Coast on business. Deciding to take full advantage of this unexpected time together, our first stop was a bookstore. While we have come to love and rely on the Internet, we both crave the intimacy of words on a printed page. We were in search of a book that would help us plan the second half of our lives. Wanting the full-tilt bookstore experience — coffee, easy chairs, and an awesome selection-off we went to the fabulous, onehundred — and-ten-year-old Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena.

There was, as you must know, no dearth of books in the self-help section, many directed toward people — well, let's put it this way-one heck of a lot older than we think of ourselves. We found lots of books about fighting old age, negative thinking, wrinkles, cholesterol, cancer, and fat, fat, fat. We found books on coping with menopause, impotence, toxic mothers, boomerang children, and stress, stress, stress. We found books empowering the inner child, the outer adult, the creative spirit, and the entrepreneur in you. We found books about where to retire, when to retire, and how to retire with enough money that you don't have to subsist on cat food.

Good ideas abounded in all of these books, but they just weren't the book we were looking for: a single, handy volume, a handbook if you will, that would tell relatively young people — people in their midforties to midsixties — how to pull it all together and start gearing up for the second half of their lives. Because there wasn't such a book, we decided to give ourselves some time to explore, experiment, and share with each other concrete ways in which we could start to prepare and plan for the next phase. Before we knew it, something uncannily like the book we had gone looking for that day in Vroman's began to take shape.

We talked once a week on the phone and exchanged innumerable e-mails — a sampling of which you'll see throughout the text — as we divided up assignments, reported on our progress, interviewed people, swapped notes, books, CDs, and Web sites, and generally tried to keep ourselves on task when we lagged and to bolster each other when we got discouraged. As the project grew and expanded in scope, our excitement began to mount. We felt like two kids on a secret journey — facing forward fearlessly, embracing the future, and determined never to look back.

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