Cheer up bro!
Shoulda, coulda woulda done something different?
Nah.
I too am 51.
I went to college, but I majored in party and did not finish (then).
I also collected guns, knives, flashlights (torches) and a whole lot of junk.
At one time I was heavily into computers and always had to have the newest and fastest. Now I just use a 5 year old Athlon 2500 with 512mb RAM running UBUNTU.
I have a basement and an attic with all kinds of stuff I will never use.
I still have the original wife, a real keeper. Just had our 30th anniversary on 6/30/08.
We never had any offspring (by choice).
There have been all kinds of bumps in the road including several long miserable years in the US Navy. AS bad as that was, I got a pretty decent job because of the experience from that.
I wasted a boat load of money on crap I didnt need and other bad investments.
Both of us could be retired if we had done things diff. However, we are probably better off because of the lessons we learned along the way.
My goal is to retire before 57 yrs old and to move the heck out of New York state.
I always tell everyone that I am going to start traveling south and stop at every Wal-Mart along the way untill I find one that does not sell snow shovels. Thats where I want to live.
I always wanted to visit down under but with airfare the way it is these days I would probably have to sell a kidney to afford the trip.
Most of all, you said it yourself:
i am 51years of age, everything in good working order, and it just struck me that if i hadn't collected guns, watches, knives, torches and wives i would have been able to retire by now
If you have your health, you are doing good.
Hey if you are lucky, you have not reached middle age yet!
