Health, Wealth, for Life: What Advanced Science Can Teach Us About Proper Wealth Management
Written by: Ryan Bouchey, CFP®, CPA
“Health…Wealth…For Life”
It’s our tagline, we do a fantastic job focusing on wealth but to be honest, we sometimes don’t focus as much on the health side of life as we should.
With the Holidays here and a New Year fast approaching, it got me thinking about what we should be focusing on as we enter 2025. To be honest, I’m not big on New Years resolutions. I don’t know what it is, but I never feel I need to make big changes entering a new calendar year. I try to live a disciplined, mostly good life. Plus, and I especially see this in my role as a financial advisor, setting big goals can sometimes lead to disappointment and failure if they are not achieved, which could put you in a worse position in the New Year.
With that said, I think we can all do small things, maybe start new habits, that can set us in the right direction. Habits and systems can be more effective than far out goals. As I think about these ideas, I think back to a great book I read this year, “Outlive” written by Peter Attia. It's mainly a health and wellness book, which I read from the perspective of how it relates to the clients I work with and how I can apply these insights to help ensure their financial success. And as much as successful financial futures come down to dollars and cents, no amount of money can help overcome your health. Without your health, what is wealth? It sheds a ton of light on our firm’s tagline – Health, Wealth, For Life
One of the concepts Attia focused on that really stood out to me was longevity and its two components: Lifespan vs. Healthspan. Lifespan is all about how long you live. Healthspan is about how well you live. Isn't the quality of our years far more important than the number of years we live? While ideally, we should aim for both quality and quantity, our focus should be on HealthSpan, which often gets overlooked. This is a huge element when working with clients, especially retirees. We stress the importance of enjoying retirement and what that looks like. Running a monte Carlo analysis in our planning software and showing a 99% chance of retirement success means nothing if these retirement years aren’t enjoyable. We encourage clients to find the right balance of financial success but also spending and enjoying all they’ve worked hard to accumulate.
I think one of the best ways for us to get there with clients is using a second concept from the book “Outlive”. This concept pertains to medical care, but it just as easily translates to financial planning and wealth management. It’s the concept of Medicine 2.0 vs. Medicine 3.0. For the longest time, health care was (and still in large part is) about Medicine 2.0, which is fixing the problem. Medicine 3.0 puts the emphasis on preventing problems by taking care of our body years before we may need to fix any health issue that could arise.
When it comes to a successful retirement, it’s imperative to have a plan in place (Wealth 3.0!), rather than trying to overcome problems (bear market) in the real time. I use this example often, and I don’t think there was a time where it was truer than in the early stages of Covid. The markets were down 35% in about a month’s time, we made it a priority to reach out to all of our clients to ensure they had financial confidence during this time of heightened uncertainty. When we would revisit their financial plans, remind them that any money they would need in the next two years was sitting in a safe cash management strategy, it gave them much more confidence than creating a financial plan for the first time during a major market shock.
Wealth 3.0 isn’t about making the most money or having outsized returns year after year, although both can help. Wealth 3.0 is about having financial clarity. It’s about knowing what is enough. It’s about being on the same page as your spouse or family from a financial standpoint, maybe with help from an advisory team like ours playing the role of financial therapist. Wealth 3.0 is all about having a plan to get through the tough financial times. As much as we think we can forecast a bear market, it’s nearly impossible. The biggest risks are the ones we don’t see coming. Having a plan, having financial clarity & vision, operating in a Wealth 3.0 environment can help us navigate these times. Planning gives us the foresight to navigate these obstacles when they arise because we’ve done what we needed to prevent financial harm, versus having to navigate and fix the problem in real time.
So, as we enter a new year, I encourage you to think about your health and your wealth in much the same way. Let’s focus on a long and prosperous healthspan and let’s find ways to implement both Medicine 3.0, but also Wealth 3.0 into our everyday lives. Sometimes it only takes small changes to habits. It may take working with a firm like ours to help implement Wealth 3.0 into your own life. Either way, I encourage you to focus on health and wealth as we enter the new year.
If you found my perspective on these ideas thought-provoking, Outlive by Peter Attia offers a deeper exploration that’s definitely worth a read!