The Health and Wealth Connection
Are good physical and financial health driven by the same fundamental psychological
factors?
Many believe it’s true that people who value their future selves enough to regularly put
money aside for their futures are likely to also make healthy decisions now to improve
their health in the future.
This concept is supported by a study entitled, “Healthy, Wealthy and Wise: Retirement
Planning Predicts Employee Health Improvements” by Timothy Gubler and Lamar
Pierce of Brigham Young University.
They explained their primary question and findings of the study as:
“We found that the decision to contribute to a 401(k) retirement plan predicted whether
an individual acted to correct poor physical-health indicators revealed during an
employer-sponsored health examination.”
They continued:
“We found that existing retirement-contribution patterns and future health improvements
were highly correlated. Employees who saved for the future by contributing to a 401(k)
showed improvements in their abnormal blood-test results and health behaviors
approximately 27% more often than noncontributors did.”
If you’ve procrastinated to save for retirement, you may want to take a look at your
physical health as well. If one is off, it’s likely that the other also needs attention –
similar to diet and exercise.
This idea is also supported by Dr. Talya Miron-Shatz, a medical and health decision
making consultant and author, who believes that the primary personality trait might be
conscientiousness. She was quoted as saying:
“… those who save and take care of their health are high on the personality trait of
conscientiousness… it’s the people high in conscientiousness who are tidy, don’t skip
school, take their medication on time and avoid temptation in other ways, including not
spending when they feel like it.”
If you believe that you are not yet one of the highly conscientious, don’t stress. It’s never
too late to be more organized, aware, and actionable. Don’t try to do it all at once and
rather try to improve just a little each day – continuously. Your physical health and bank
accounts in retirement will thank you.
-Kevin Theissen, HWC Financial, Ludlow
