Stay Healthy to Keep Wealthy – by Richard Cayne

Managing your wealth and assets isn’t just a matter of maintaining a robust and diversified portfolio. In many ways, it’s also about maintaining your health. Staying healthy is critical to solidifying the vision you’ve created for your retirement and estate.

Good physical and emotional health isn’t solely a key factor in enjoying and optimizing your overall happiness at various stages in your life, it’s also tethered to the health of your financial life.

Your Health Can Save Money

While this may not be the first thing to come to mind when you think of critical factors to your financial success, when you really sit back and think about it, you’ll realize just how paramount and sensible it is. In particular, the financial considerations that apply to both your life insurance and health insurance are directly related to how health and finances go hand in hand. A physical exam is required for most life insurance policies, and the ones that don’t probably aren’t going to provide you with the top-tier coverage you desire. Your medical history and the current state of your mental and physical health can be important elements in the cost to your monthly and yearly costs, and even with a decent health coverage plan, pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure, hypertension or high levels of bad cholesterol can spell medication costs, sometimes a plethora of medications (which may or may not be inexpensive) that ultimately impact your out-of-pocket expenditures. Furthermore, a worst-case scenario like heart attack or stroke could leave you in a position where you require hospital stays or serious regular medical assistance. Chronic conditions (particularly those that may result from unhealthy lifestyle choices [and are thus less likely to be fully covered]) can put a serious dent in your finances.

Your Health Can Extend Your Wealth

As mentioned above, saving money on health care costs equates to more money you have to invest in your future. That’s not the only way strong health can lead to greater wealth, however. The correlation between physical health and mental/emotional health spells a higher degree of focus that you can put into your work and investments. The success that comes with a greater degree of focus translates into business success, which, in turn, translates into accelerated income and expanding wealth. In many ways, you could say that a healthy lifestyle is, in and of itself, a great investment. For example, choosing to walk or ride a bicycle in situations where they serve as viable alternatives to driving your car saves on fuel costs and the wear and tear your vehicle incurs over time. Cooking at home with a healthy diet in mind (as opposed to eating out or choosing “comfort food”) can also greatly reduce your expenses in the long run. If gardening is your forte, you not only stay physically active while tending to your garden, you also reap the benefits of the healthy, homegrown food that you harvest yourself- thus providing you with a double bonus in overall health and financial well-being.

Always Make Sure Your Finances Are Healthy

As you can see, investing in one’s future can manifest in many forms. While it’s always nice to save money, it’s even better to plan ahead in order to avoid the potentially unnecessary burden of medical costs that could have been preventable through better choices ahead of time. Making prudent and pragmatic lifestyle choices or changes can greatly enhance the ‘health of your wealth’ in the long run. You don’t need to join some exclusive gym or try to keep up with expensive diet trends. Reasonably moderate daily exercise and practical, healthy dietary habits can make a world of difference and little extra financial cost and an annual physical check-up is a lot more affordable than long-term medical costs later down the line. And just as getting an annual checkup on your health is important, so too is making sure to regularly check up on your financial health.

Trusted financial advisors such as myself are here to provide you with exactly that kind of check-up. Think of us as “financial physicians”. We’ll make sure your portfolio stays as healthy as can be.

Richard Cayne based in Bangkok Thailand heads the Meyer Group which is a wholly owned subsidiary of://Asia Wealth Group Holdings Ltd.com/ Listed on the Aquis Stock Exchange in London UK