I've been thinking a lot about this recently as my wife and I are starting to think towards retirement and having gone through the death of some close family me

I've been thinking a lot about this recently as my wife and I are starting to think towards retirement and having gone through the death of some close family members. My father used to give me the advice "live life such that if you were to write your own autobiography you'd find it interesting." Yet when he was beginning the process of dying he told me about his regrets in not traveling to see more of the world. The regret was so profound that it immobilized him to the point that even though he wasn't yet sick enough to need daily care, and could have gone to one or two of the places on his bucket list, he couldn't manage it. I was struck one-time while on vacation in Europe with a tour group, an elderly woman in a mobility chair had become very frustrated with the amount of difficulty she had with getting around to see various sites we were stopping at. She lamented that she had wasted her life waiting to retirement to come see these places and by then was in such poor physical shape she spent more time on or near the bus than seeing things. At the foot of a rather simple cobblestone incline she finally broke down in sobs because there just wasn't a reasonable way for her or her caregivers to get her up the thousands of uneven stones in the street. Yet I also know people who gravitate and prioritize immediately emotionally satisfying experiences and choices over long-term planning. They all have money problems, unstable housing situations, and nothing saved for when they can no longer work. Yet the moment the next emotionally satisfying opportunity arises they leap at it even if it again causes them to fall back into the steep pit of daily and long-term struggles they can't escape from. I'm happy where I've arrived and the balance I've struck. But I know that it also wouldn't make other people satisfied as they have a different way of optimizing this problem. For me? Take care of the short, medium and long-term problems, live below my means, use the excess to buy experiences not things, and check that bucket list off while I'm young enough to enjoy it. That way, while I sit old and secure in my retirement I can be satisfied that I did what I wished, but still ended up well enough to take care of what I needed to do.