Your Health Affects Your Wealth
When building wealth you must engage in wealthy habits. These are habits that allow you to save and invest 20% of your income. Wealth habits greatly affect your ability to grow your money and establish financial security. Individuals who grow their net worth into the millions and billions share characteristics, to read some check out this earlier posts on habits of millionaires. However, outside of such habits there is another aspect of your life that affects your wealth. That is your health.
Your health is tied to your wealth because of the high cost of health care. Whether you have insurance or not, if you become sick and need to be treated by the health care system and need drugs you will pay medical bills. Think of your co-pays, deductibles, medications etc. Your wallet can take a serious beating. On average:
- A person who has a heart attack will pay $5,000 – $8,000.
- A person who has a stroke can expect to pay $23,380.
- A person who has diabetes will pay $11,400 per year.
Most of us don’t have the means to dole out thousands of dollars on medical costs. If you have an emergency fund you may be able to handle the expenses, however, what if there is more than one large medical expense? Or what if your emergency fund hasn’t recovered from the last emergency before you incur a large medical expense? Medical bills can quickly eat up your paycheck and your savings, 62% of bankruptcies are due to medical bills. In other words medical bills are the number one reason for bankruptcies in the U.S.
In order to mitigate this, try to stay as healthy as possible. Duh right. Think of each bout of exercise and nutritious change in your diet as an investment into yourself and your wealth. Or you’ll spend the wealth you’ve accumulated trying to better your health.
- Work on eating right by incorporating a variety of fruits and vegetables in your diet.
- Get active, whether you pick up a sport, a gym membership or walk around the neighborhood.
- Wash your hands and your food. Carry hand sanitizer for those times where there is no access to water and soap.
Work on maintaining your health so you can try your best to avoid becoming ill and save yourself thousands of dollars. Instead of paying medical bills this money can go towards your savings and investments.
Leave your comments below and reach us on Facebook and Twitter. There’s even more content in the newsletter. Sign-up to get it.
Photo credit: 401kcalculator.org
