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LIFETIME BLUEPRINT
What Is a 70th Birthday Called? Platinum, and Three Score and Ten
Part of the series Milestone Birthday Names by Year: 21st, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th and Beyond
A 70th birthday is called the platinum birthday, after the platinum wedding anniversary, and it carries a much older name than any gemstone: three score and ten, the span of a life in the ninetieth Psalm, the days of our years are threescore years and ten. For centuries that was the number a person hoped to reach, and 70 still lands, for many, as the birthday at which they have been given the full measure. In the Lifetime Blueprint's terms it is squarely inside the legacy decades, the years written in flashes, and the birthday at which the stories most need telling.
Quick answer: A 70th birthday is called the platinum birthday, from the 70th wedding anniversary. The traditional name is three score and ten, from Psalm 90, the biblical span of a life.
Platinum, and the Psalm
Platinum is the 70th anniversary on the modern list and the birthday borrowed it recently. Three score and ten is centuries older and does not need borrowing; a score is twenty, so three score and ten is seventy, and the phrase names the birthday as the completion of a full allotted life. Both are correct. The second one is the one worth saying out loud at the table, because it changes the tone of the day from a number to a gift.
What 70 is for
The book's chapter on the sixties and after says the record in these years fills in flashes rather than long sittings: a paragraph after a meaningful conversation, a sentence after a loss, a page after watching a young person do something only you could have taught them. At 70 the priorities it names are sharper still. Tell the stories, often, to the people you love; they will not remember them if you do not. Say what is unsaid. Keep learning, because being a learner is what keeps an elder interesting to the young. And build toward leaving the pages where someone may find them.
What to do at 70
Write the stories down before the bucket leaks, which is the book's plainest instruction and the one families most regret skipping. The decade chapters have a page in each for stories worth keeping and a photo index, and a person at 70 has seven chapters of material nobody else can supply. Then the letters that count: to a grandchild, to whoever reads this after you, and the Final Letter, written across many sittings in the years when it can still be written well. Life after sixty is the chapter; backfilling the decades is how seventy years get written without attempting them in one winter; one book your family keeps is the reason to.
The other milestones
All the milestone birthday names. Neighbors: the 60th, diamond and the 80th, oak.
Lifetime Blueprint
The hardcover built to be inherited: eight life domains scored across decades, thirty life-event templates, and letters written forward, ending in a Final Letter.
What is a 70th birthday called?
The platinum birthday, borrowed from the platinum wedding anniversary. The traditional name is three score and ten, from Psalm 90, the biblical span of a life.
What does three score and ten mean?
Seventy. A score is twenty, so three score and ten is seventy, the number Psalm 90 gives as the days of our years. It names the 70th birthday as the completion of a full allotted life.
More on Lifetime Blueprint
- Why Most People Will Never Write Their Life Down
- Your Fifties: The Distillation Decade, Subtraction Over Addition
- Your Forties Are a Recalibration, Not a Crisis
- Your Thirties: The Building Decade, When Time Starts to Feel Finite
- Your Twenties: The Decade of Compounding Choices
The method behind every book
- Which 365-Day Book Should I Start With? A One-Minute Guide
- What Is a No Zero Day? The Rule That Saves a Bad Week
- What Is a Realistic Morning Routine? Two Minutes, Not Two Hours
All articles about Lifetime Blueprint → · The book page → · All the books →
written by the author, at the kitchen table, after work.