The Financial Value of Healthy Living – Episode 111

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Once again, we have bestselling financial author and president of Partners for Prosperity, Kim Butler with us today. Hey, Kim. Hello, Todd. How are you? Super. Today we’re going to be talking about the value of good health, and this is probably one of the best shows that Kim Butler and I can do because Kim’s automatically set on good health mode. I mean, she thinks about health first and then understands that wealth comes from

[00:56] that. I come from the school of thought of if you want more money, you need to work harder. And it’s all related based upon effort and strategy. And a lot of times it means sacrificing health and in order to gain wealth. So you have people who are coming at this from two different areas and we’re approximately the same age, yet at this point in her life, Kim’s just chugging on along. I’ve been through half a million dollars worth of surgery, so it’s starting to be blatantly, obviously, what you’re going to hear from Kim is obviously correct. But I do want to represent the other side because I think there’s a lot of people who think like I did. And I used to too, so don’t feel too bad about it.

[01:44] But it is interesting how differently an approach, first of all, an entrepreneurial mindset can have because you can have an entrepreneurial mindset even if you are a W2 employee, but also how critical just some simple habits are that make a world of a difference. And the one that I would love to start with is sleep. And I know you’ve got some fun statistics to share with us. Why don’t you do that first? And then I’ll share with everybody my habit for sleep. All right. And this just blew my mind. One extra hour of sleep per week translates an additional income of five percent annually. An hour a week, five percent annual. I mean, that’s pretty amazing math. Now, source that for us. Would you, Todd, so that we’ve got some credibility behind the statistic?

[02:45] Sure. This can be found in the July 2016 issue of Money magazine. It’s also listed at money.com. Awesome. So get eight hours period. Just make it happen. Do whatever you need to do to get eight hours. And for most people, this is not sleeping in. This is going to bed early. And I guarantee you that every single person has an extra hour or two, if necessary, in their evening time that is wasted, that could be used for sleep. So I don’t want to belabor this. It’s just something that you absolutely will want to make happen. And it’s shutting off the TV and it’s shutting off the phones and the Facebooks and the Lincolns and the Twitters and the YouTubes and everything that goes with that. And going to bed at whatever time is necessary for you to get eight hours.

[03:42] So if you get up every morning at six, then you need to be in bed by 10 period. And if you’ll just make a habit of that, it’ll seem weird at first. You’ll feel like you’re missing out. You will not fall asleep right away. And yet over time, your body will adjust. I’m sure it’s probably the 21 days that it takes to build any kind of habit. Your body will adjust and you’ll lay down and go to sleep. And the other thing I think that helps that is to make sure that all of the electronics are out of the room while you’re sleeping. So I do have my phone by my bedside, but I cover it up. So there’s no blinking or flashing lights. We don’t have an alarm that is showing on the ceiling or anything else.

[04:24] We don’t have any other lights. And not that you necessarily have to have blackout shades, but if you can even go that far, that’s helpful too. But just get all of the electronics out of the room. You don’t need the buzzing and the lights and everything that goes with them. And sleep. Eight hours of sleep every night. So your statistic is one at an hour a week. So great. Pick one night and make that start to happen. And then the next week, go for two nights and then three nights and then four nights, five nights, six nights, seven nights. And it will absolutely transform your ability to be sharp at work, your patience with children and spouses, your consciousness of the good that’s going on because right now you’re probably so tired

[05:11] that you don’t know that you’re tired and you’ve got to get past that. Absolutely. Cannot argue. It also just happens to mention that the number one thing you can do for weight loss is also is getting the proper amount of sleep because it allows your body to perform functions that causes you to lose weight. Who could think, who would think of that? That’s right. Yep. I have heard that as well. Super well. Let’s just look at, I’ve got some other statistics here that talk about this in monetary terms. And what this shows is, is it’s the healthiest 20% of Americans versus the least healthiest 20% of Americans. And it talks about their non 401k assets. Now it starts off in 1992 comparing the least to the healthiest.

[05:59] The healthiest 20% averaged $361,000 in assets. The least healthy averaged 167,000. So roughly that’s half, right? Yep. Double your money. Now in 2008, this number has changed staggeringly to the healthiest 20% averages 748,500. The least healthy averages 206,500. So we’re at four times roughly. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. And so here we’ve got a direct correlation between good health and asset base. And it’s interesting, in the second part did they choose to do non 401k also? Yes. These are all the numbers are non 401k assets. So this is, you know, I imagine the 401ks are also higher for the people because they’re working more. I would agree. And here’s my take on that. The reason that they chose, now this is my perception,

[07:06] I don’t know this, but the reason that they chose the non 401k assets is that those take a little bit more proactiveness, a little bit more work on the part of the owner. Whereas the 401k, it’s as simple as checking a box at your work or in today’s world, it’s not checking the box because so many 401k participants are just automatically opted in. And so it’s interesting that they chose to focus on the non 401k. So the people that have greater health, I think also have more time to focus on building their wealth. And so because they have that extra time, they actually get results. And building wealth not only takes a little bit of time, it takes consistent financial effort. And people that are not healthy

[07:54] are spending more time at the doctors, they’re spending more money, even if their health insurance is covering a lot of their fixes, if you will, they are still spending more money and more time dealing with their health and people that are already healthy. No doubt they have to spend money and time on health also. I mean, I’m the first to admit I spend money on trainers, I spend money on good food and etc. To get not only my physical intake as high of a level of appropriateness as I can, but also my physical output, a high of a level of appropriateness as I can. So I spend money on that, no doubt. You just hit the main topic we’re going to next. Okay, I believe it. Well, I guarantee you that’s proactive work.

[08:45] And that’s what the difference is with these wealthier people is they had proactive time and money to learn and save instead of being in a defensive mode. Here, the next statistic that I have for you is hitting the gym three times a week has been tied to higher pay. And this is from the Journal of Labor Research 2012 study. The average salary boost to go into the gym just three times a week, 7% for men, 12% for women. 7% increase in salary because you went to the gym three times a week or 12% for women. How interesting, number one, that that’s quite a bit of difference between the two. And number two, that it’s that identifiable because absolutely not only are a physically fit person going to get better results

[09:47] just because our society places so much importance on that, but that physically fit person is going to feel better themselves and just their own energy level. Forget how the physical body looks. Your own energy level that’s operating at a higher tune when you are working out is going to enable you to get better results. I have absolutely no doubt of it. I love that it has been quantified. And something that I want to share that may be of interest or just good for laughter, I’m not sure, but don’t let anything keep you from creating the structure, the habit, the pattern that you need to work out. And so very quickly, just for fun, when I moved from Scott Steel, Arizona, which had a trainer or a gym on every other block

[10:42] to Mount Interpraise, Texas, which there’s not a gym within a half an hour of us and certainly no physical trainers, when I moved here, there might be a few more now, I had to create a way to duplicate what I’d had when I lived in Arizona. And so the trainer that I had there agreed to help me do my workouts long distance. And so what we do is use a Yahoo instant message or any type of video camera connection or a beam robot is our current. And she signs in and we go to my little tiny 10 by 10 room that has a mirror on one wall so she can see the whole room. And I do my workouts with her. And we’re at two times a week now because it’s summertime and I want to swim the third day of the week. But it has been so valuable

[11:33] and I can encourage people enough to get help, get an accountability buddy, get a trainer, get whatever it is you need to make the workouts happen. Do not let anything, including geography and the particular place that you live or what have you, keep you from getting this exercise. Super. I think you’ve nailed that topic. The next one, and again, I have not smoked. You’ve not smoked. So we can’t maybe directly relate to this, but the numbers behind smoking just kind of blew me away. First of all, if you smoke one pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years, the actual cost of the cigarettes is $94,000. Secondly, they estimate that it costs $35 in healthcare expenses for every pack of cigarettes that’s smoked.

[12:27] I mean, think about that. So based upon those figures, the average smoker will spend 1.1 to 2 million dollars in total costs to smoke over a lifetime. That is unbelievable. When Todd first shared that with me, I said, okay, we’ve got to make that relevant because our client base doesn’t smoke. I mean, yeah, of course we have a few, but we have to know whether you smoke or not if we help you with life insurance. And I’m always so thrilled that it’s very, very rare that I hear that somebody does. But Todd, take those statistics a step further as it relates to life insurance. What are the premiums for smokers versus non-smokers? Again, we’re just going to use an example of a 40-year-old man in good health.

[13:15] And this is for a $500,000 term policy. The average premium is $342. That same 40-year-old man in good health who smokes the annual premium goes up to $1,500. So it’s a $1,200 annual increase. And percentage-wise, that’s off the charts. Absolutely. And the one thing that I can tell you about life insurance companies is they understand statistics. I mean, they’re not just making this up to penalize smokers. They’re doing this because you’ve reduced your life expectancy significantly. Well, it is very, very interesting how long this non-smoking message has been around and yet how some people are still stuck in it. So if you have somebody in your family that is smoking, help them fill that space

[14:04] with another habit. And again, as Todd said, we can’t speak to this personally, but I do have some friends that have been able to quit smoking and it’s because they chose another habit to focus on. Rather than focusing on don’t smoke, stop smoking, whatever, they focused on let’s go walking or let’s drink water or find a new habit to fill in the space so that every time you’re tempted, you go do that. And it’s adding to your life rather than trying to take away. You know, it’s just like the kids that are running by the pool. If we say don’t run, they don’t hear the don’t word, they just hear the run word. And so when you’re looking at your habits, let’s remember to add, let’s remember to bring in

[14:47] the positive impact, the things that we want to increase or improve and focus on them rather than focusing on the thing that we don’t want. I would say that smoking is also relevant to all of us in that that million dollars that’s being spent in health care in most cases is going to be coming out of some form of a government financed health insurance. And that makes us all smokers in a way. That is very well said. Either that or the responsibility is all of ours to help those that are smoking to stop smoking so that we are not having to pay their health care bills. Super. Well, again, I just, I hope with bringing this up today that we could take this concept of being healthy. And again, like I said,

[15:34] this is so ingrained in Kim right now that it’s just it’s amazing. But like I said, having spent a lifetime of really spending health to gain wealth and now trying to figure out how to get the health back again, it’s does none of these numbers surprise me. It absolutely confirms what I’ve seen in myself and in my friends. And before we wrap up, we just want to finish up with the topic of stress. And I’m going to share one more statistic and then we’re done. And the top sources of stress today. And again, stress is another one of these things that’s costing millions of dollars per year. Sixty seven percent of the people say that they’re stressed about money. Sixty five percent say work. Fifty four percent say family.

[16:19] Fifty one percent talk about health concerns. So isn’t it interesting that, I mean, when it comes to this money conversation, stop smoking, sleep more and exercise three times a week could be a million dollar difference for everybody listening. A million dollars plus. Amazing. The additional comment that I want to make is that so often money stresses are caused because we don’t have an emergency opportunity fund. So start building yours today, whether it’s a little bit of money at a bank or a credit union or it’s a life insurance policy because you’re ready for the next phase where you’re building your emergency opportunity as cash value of whole life insurance. That is often what provides the most peace of mind

[17:11] for people of all ages. People may have assets, but if they don’t have an emergency slash opportunity fund and I make the point on both words, ability to handle emergencies and the ability to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves, then more stress occurs. So build up that emergency opportunity fund and plan on building it your entire life because most people want to have bigger emergency slash opportunity funds as they age, not smaller. And of course, big and small are very relative to your own family situation. But we have found that our clients want to continue to fund those emergency opportunity funds literally their entire lives. They’ve got to beat inflation anyway,

[17:57] and they want to have more and more liquid wealth. Super. Well, this is No BS Money Guy Todd Strobel. Once again, thanks to Kim Butler and I had fun with this subject. I hope you all enjoy it too. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.