In November, I turn 59 ½.  This is of absolutely no interest to anyone, except maybe to kids under the age of 10 who think half-birthdays are significant enough to merit another round of gifts.  It might also catch the careful eye of a financial planner, who will tell me that on that day I can now dip into my retirement funds without paying a surcharge to the IRS for the privilege of spending my own money.

Oh, yes … and then there are the life insurance companies.  They will take note of this otherwise ho-hum day, by rounding my age up half a notch for purposes of assessing me a fatter premium.

Actually, I myself am interested for more or less the same reason as the life insurers – for I, too, will greet 59 ½ as the beginning of turning 60.  I intend to celebrate that BIG one by … what else? … training for and running a marathon.  It’s just a matter of persuading my knees not to card me at the starting line and thus declining to serve me.

I don’t really relish turning 60, but I honestly cannot think of a better age to be at the moment.  I love having so much time in my column – not time ahead certainly, but time behind me and all the experiences and lessons of the past.  It makes me a wiser mother, a more loving friend, and a better storyteller. The degrees of separation between me and just about anyone else, at least here in the US, are down to just one or two.  If I haven’t met you yet, I know someone who knows you, or someone who knows someone who knows you.  If I have in fact met you, but don’t remember, I have a built-in chronological excuse we can both laugh about without my needing to apologize.

This is abundance.  I am rich in experience, and each day, month, year adds to my stockpile.  To be able to say this — in an economy where scarcity, loss, and promises of the same for the indefinite future are daily headlines — is pretty amazing to me.

I just spent two days with my good friends and colleagues doing some strategic planning for our business, Directions. It was the best business meeting I’ve ever been to in my professional career, as well as the most unusual. All of us are Certified Financial Planners, but we spent virtually no time on our balance sheet or income statement.  The “Show Me the Money” mantra that is usually the touchstone of business strategic planning was entirely absent.  We did not count revenues or itemize expenses; instead we took an inventory of our beliefs about women and their planning needs.  We rejected the notion that our work is about women and money, and embraced the notion that we are concerned with women’s worth, which is a much larger concept that includes not just financial assets, but their intelligence, their experiences, communities, faiths, families, friends, work, and legacies.  We agreed that our purpose is to help women (and the world) appreciate this worth – that it is indeed an asset that never goes into deficit, but grows in value over time.

So while my 59 ½, then 60^th birthday may indeed be momentous to the IRS, life insurers, AARP, and movie theaters wishing to entice me with their senior discounts, I expect to celebrate quietly for an entirely different reason. Never before has my worth been greater, and never after will it be any less.