Why Everyone Over 40 Should Write A Book

by Bonnie Boots

If you've lived 40 years or more, you should write a book. And I'll tell you a story that illustrates why.

Last weekend I had dinner with a lovely woman who is 82 years of age. We were discussing the rising cost of gasoline and how it's impacting on almost everything we buy.

Because my friend and I have both experienced high gas prices and shortages in the past, we have an idea of what the future may bring and how we'll get through it. Our talk rang with phrases like "Last time this happened, we…"

As we chatted, my friend said, "Well, here we go again. Back to "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

She was quoting an old rhyme that was popular during the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and turned into one of the worst periods of economic hardship the United States has ever seen. It was followed by the years of World War II, when severe rationing of gas and food was a tiresome part of everyday life.

Nothing I have been through in my life compares to what my friend experienced from the start of the Depression until the end of WWII. Still, I saw the gas crisis of the 1970's and have lived through times both fat and lean. So over lunch, we shared stories about cutting back, cutting down and making do.

It wasn't long before a young woman in her early twenties, seated at the next table, caught the drift of our conversation and joined in. "I'm having a terrible time getting by," she said. "but I really can't think of anything I can do to cut down on expenses."

I asked her a few questions about where she spent her money every day. One of the things she mentioned was her morning trip to Starbucks for a $5 latte.

"There you go," I said. "You're spending $5 a day, 6 times a week, on coffee. If you make coffee at home and take it to work in a thermos, you'll save $150 every month. Or you could treat yourself to your latte on Saturdays and still save $125.

She looked surprised. "Gosh, I always just think of the $5, and that doesn't seem like much. I never thought about what I was spending in a month."

Then she added "But I don't know how to make coffee. Is it hard?"

It took every bit of self-control I have not to laugh out loud. Imagine not knowing how to make coffee! But the fact is, for people of her generation, getting everything you eat from a drive-up window is a way of life.

I know people living in lovely homes where the pristine kitchens are used only to store or heat-up restaurant leftovers. For the most part, these people grew up in families where working parents came home at the end of the day bearing dinner from Pizza Hut or Kentucky Fried Chicken. The now-adult children of these families have no experience with planning, shopping for and preparing meals at home. For them, even something as simple as coffee and a bagel comes from a drive-through, not the kitchen.

For the young woman I met at lunch, and many like her, learning how to brew a pot of coffee and toast a bagel at home would be a powerful way to begin taking control of their budget. But who will teach them?

I'm suggesting it should be you.

If you've lived forty years or more, you certainly have developed all sorts of knowledge and skills. You have seen the ups and downs of life and learned all sorts of ways to deal with them.

And all around you, around the world, are a generation or two of young adults who, although they do not realize it, have grown up in a very rare period of relative peace and prosperity. They've also grown up with very little guidance and virtually no practical experience in all sorts of things you and I take for granted.

It goes beyond not knowing how to brew coffee. You would be amazed how many people don't know how to calculate whether small eggs or large eggs are the better buy, don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to determine how much they can afford to spend on rent, don't know how to wash their own clothes.

And never having lived through a serious downturn in the economy, they don't know how to economize.

If you live long enough, you learn that everything goes through cycles, especially the economy. Sooner or later, everything that has happened happens again. The world has seen hard economic times before. And now it's come around again. Once again people need to tighten their belts and watch their budgets. They need to do things for themselves, things many of them have never been taught to do.

The internet offers the most marvelous medium for creating and selling digital products. And what sells best on the internet is information.

If you're 40, 50, 60 years or more, you have information and knowledge that are sorely needed. If you have grand, high knowledge about the meaning of life, by all means, pass it on. But remember that it's the more mundane aspects of life-how to soothe a colicky baby, how to handle a dispute with your in-laws, how to brew coffee-that people really want help with.

Show people how to solve their problems and improve their lives--show them in words and pictures and even videos-- and you won't have to worry about the economy. Your own will be just fine.
 

 
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