Personal health & Financial health

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Volando
Posts: 188
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:52 pm

Personal health & Financial health

Post by Volando »

I'm fairly new to the world of investing and personal finance but I've been trying to read up as much as possible on the topic, both here and elsewhere. One thing I've noticed is that there seems to be a lack of focus on personal health as a component of financial health. I suppose this is to be expected because the main goal of finance is to increase wealth in terms of dollars. But as someone who works in healthcare, I'm wondering why that there isn't more discussion on personal health as a component of financial health. In the world of investing and finance we learn about the importance of compounding for the building of wealth. There's similar parallels in physical health that go hand in hand, both in terms of how much we spend on poor health but also how much we can save with good health which builds over time. I suppose this ties in to a general lack of focus on prevention versus treatment but I think there's something to be said about associating good physical health with good financial health.

In my time in healthcare I've encountered so many patients whose personal health decisions over the years have built over time to result in poor health. So many areas such as diabetes, hypertension, heart failure and others are influenced by the decisions we make over the years and are largely preventable. Similar to the importance of saving for the accumulation of wealth, there is a similar effect with the accumulation of good decisions such as exercise, diet, sleeping well, etc. Even simple efforts can make a big impact here if they're taken (which aligns with BH philosophy imo). If we avoid making good decisions with our health we'll likely end up in poor health, similar to how we'll end up in poor financial health if we avoid saving and controlling our expenditures. In the end they tie together. The worse our health, the more we'll spend on it. Of the ones I've mentioned, the U.S. spends ~>300 billion on diabetes, >20 billion on hypertension, >40 billion on heart failure (I just did a quick search on this so my numbers could be off). Certainly private and public payers step in to cover some of this cost but many patients are left paying the bill on at least some portion of their healthcare costs (I'm not trying to make this a debate about single payer vs. alternatives or politics in general).

In the end, they even tie together. The worse our financial health, the worse our physical health as the impact of anxiety, depression and general lack of control begins to impact physical health. The better our financial health, the better our physical health as the toll of worrying about financial health is minimized. Reading through a lot of the advice on personal finance there seems to be an emphasis on how to save, what types of vehicles are available for saving, what types of investment strategies are available, etc. Very few seem to emphasize the inclusion of personal health decisions even though its deeply intertwined. I'm curious about starting a discussion with others to see what people think about this and whether there should a greater emphasis on this. As I mentioned before, I know in general there's poor financial and health literacy across the board but in training people to be financially literate, shouldn't there be more on being health literate? In my mind, it's just as important to learn to make good health decisions as it is to pay off your credit care debt. (I'm open to the possibility that I simply haven't encountered the right resources that tie them together or that I'm just being naive to think people will begin caring more about their physical health.).
Nathan Drake
Posts: 6238
Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2011 12:28 am

Re: Personal health & Financial health

Post by Nathan Drake »

It's an important topic that can have considerable long-term compounding ramifications to one's personal financial health, especially given how expensive healthcare is.

Unfortunately, it's also a topic mired in complexity, controversy, and divisiveness. Going down the rabbit hole of special interest, you find that many of the major policies for dietary guidelines come from lobbying by certain industries and are based upon junk science epidemiological studies. So what is officially sanctioned as a "healthy" diet filled with overly processed foods and combined with rancid seed oils (rather than natural fats), and one where we have to eat/snack regularly throughout the day while leading a largely sedentary lifestyle is precisely leading us down the path to unhealthy outcomes - first comes the insulin resistance, then the pre-diabetes to full blown diabetes, and combines with comorbidities that are directly the result of metabolic dysfunction (heart disease, high blood pressure, cancers, immunological issues and susceptibility to viruses like COVID, etc.)

I fear that some of this may be "by design" by the aforementioned monied interests:
  • It's in the best interest of the processed food industry to sell you garbage food
  • It's in the best interest of the pharmaceutical industry to sell you drugs that do not treat the underlying cause and may have their own long-term health side effect consequences.
  • It's in the best interest of acute care providers dealing with a patient that, for many years had bad lifestyle choices leading to lifelong dependence on pharmaceuticals that failed to work, which must now deal with things like heart attacks, cancer, and diabetes.
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Flyer24
Posts: 5233
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2018 4:21 pm

Re: Personal health & Financial health

Post by Flyer24 »

Topic is locked (not investment related). Personal health is off-topic for this forum.
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