SUGGESTED DONATION FOR SESSION £5 (minimum donation £1)
Are you dreading old age? Excited about the thought of one day retiring? Curious to think how later life could be for you? Or too busy to think about it?
We are two friends - a social entrepreneur and a civil servant - and we are exploring how people in their 40s are (or aren’t) thinking ahead to their old age, and how we can help.
Whatever your thoughts, join us for a fun, friendly, thought-provoking session to inspire us to make the most of our old age, and maybe fear it less.
There will be tea and home-made cake included in the ticket.
You Only Get Old Once - background
We are Saffron and Kath. We've been friends for a long time, and over the years we've joked about setting up a commune so that we and other friends can live together and have fun when we're old.
But now we’re in our 40s, our old age - so the thought of being in our 60s, 70s and beyond - still seems pretty far off, but it’s getting a bit more real. And it feels like some of the choices we make now - about our health, work, money, social connections - might well have a big effect on what it will be like.
That’s frightening and depressing in some ways, because we know that for our generation, it’ll be a real challenge to make sure we’ve got enough money to live comfortably, and it’s never fun to think about our health getting worse, or losing friends and family.
But on the other hand, thinking about getting older also feels like a huge opportunity - apparently statistically we have a one in ten chance of living to 100 - and that’s a lot more life that we can potentially do something with.
We are both fascinated by this topic, and it feels to us like something we don’t talk about enough - both the bad and frightening side of aging, but also how to make the most of all those future years we might get to enjoy if we’re lucky.
That's why we're working on You Only Get Old Once (YOGO). We want to start a conversation with people roughly our age to understand how others are feeling about it, and to see whether there’s more we could do to help each other to enjoy it.