Spend More Time With Their Partner
Life can get busy and it gets busier when you become a parent. In your 40s, you spend most of your undivided attention on your children to the extent that sometimes you forget that your spouse is also your life partner. Spending some quality time in your 30s with your beloved would have helped in developing a deeper and better understanding of your partner.
Take Up a Hobby
You always wished to play the guitar or simply learn to bake cookies or just write down random thoughts and poems as a hobby. But it is unquestionably unimaginable now since you spend more time in deciding your child’s hobby or extracurricular activity. Learning new skills or taking up a hobby can be the best memory you can have of your 30s.
Have a Child Savings Fund
This does not necessarily mean investing in a formal financial scheme. It means having a dedicated savings account or recurring deposits to pile-up funds that will stay untouched for any other expense except those incurred on children. While it might be never too late to plan and start saving, parents who started saving in their 30s get an advantage by their 40s thanks to the power of money compounding.
Exercise or Working Out
The forties is a very unique phase. It is the decade that will complete your transformation to officially reaching middle age. During this phase, body metabolism reaches a lazy pace and it is when that you wish you had exercised well in your 30s. Even a steady walk would have been better than the dash you make every morning to the school’s bus-stop with your child’s bag dangling from one arm!
Read your favorite books or poem
In your 40s, most of the reading you will do will be at your work and at home with your child’s school syllabus. Time does fly during this phase and you always feel that you could have dedicated more time to read good books. Thankfully, this is something you can still do now, be it romantic quotes or poems you could share with your spouse or finding a great article to read online, together.
Consolidate your social circle
If there is something which takes the toll the most during your parental phase it is your friends circle. You realize that you are in touch with far lesser friends than you were when you were in your 20s and could have had larger social circle if you maintained contact in your 30s.
Travel new places
Travelling is a great way of learning about new places and seeing different parts of the globe. In your 40s, your children would take up most of your time and even money. On the other hand, in your 30s, you could have considered even going for a second honeymoon with there being several exotic locations all over the place.
Enjoy the small things in life
Taking a bicycle trip on a cool cloudy day. Have an ice cream cone with three scoops of ice cream. These are the small joys of life which you enjoyed individually but find little time now since you are drowned most of the time in family obligations and responsibilities.
Opt for a career/job you love
When you become a parent, you become less experimental. You tend to stick to the same job, even if you don’t like it, for the sake of maintaining stability for your family. It is then that you feel that you could have had a better sense of satisfaction if had you chosen a job or a sector which you would have loved in the long run.
Do social service or charity
There would have been no better phase than your 30s to spend time on social service and charity. You had the time, resources and the energy to indulge in helping other people. It would have also brought a greater sense of satisfaction and accomplishment in your life.
Done research on schools and schooling
Things can get overwhelming once you have children and when they reach an age that makes them due to be sent to the school. Research done beforehand can be of great help and what better time it could have been that your 30s.
Be less afraid of parenting
During your 30s, one will have numerous questions in mind about the various virtues of parenting but most are outright scared to ask them. You don’t want to go around asking people, even your loved ones, about the best parenting tips because you find it silly. Eventually one has a realization that if one would been more inquisitive back then then they would have spent less time on trial and error.
Reading for kids
This is something most parents in their 40s would eventually regret. It is always great to know a story or two, to share with your children before you tuck them into the bed! By the way, it’s never too late to start if you already haven’t. As they say, 40s are the new 30s! Featured photo credit: love-couple pic via thebridalbox.com
