Your Health and Financial Wealth Are Closely Linked

“When health is absent, wealth is useless,” Herophilus, the ancient Greek physician, tells us. Another sage of antiquity, the Roman poet Virgil, puts it another way: “The greatest wealth is health.”

Gandhi once opined that, “It is health that is real wealth, and not pieces of gold and silver.” And then there’s this, attributable to just about any Tom, Dick or Harry: “You can’t buy good health.”

Counseled by such wise words distinguishing health from wealth, one might begin to believe the two have little to do with each another. One would be tragically misinformed.

The relationship between your finances and your health status and behaviors is strong and complex.

First of all, to put it simply, unhealthy choices are expensive. The average price of a pack of Marlboro cigarettes in Tennessee today is just under $5 (it’s more expensive in nearly every other state). If you’re a two-packs-a-day smoker, that’s $3,650 a year you could have saved, invested or made even more money on. And that doesn’t count the high health costs your smoking habit all but guarantees down the road.

It’s the same with being overweight. If you’re one of the two-thirds of Americans who are overweight or obese, chances are you’re spending more money on food than someone at a healthy weight, and you’ll face the costly ramifications of your weight condition later in life.

In 2011, a George Washington University study concluded the average annual cost of being obese was $4,879 for women and $2,646 for men. (The figures include indirect costs such as diminished productivity and direct costs such as medical care.) Invested annually over a 40-year career at a conservative 5 percent average annual return, an obese woman could have almost $600,000 in savings and an obese man more than $320,000.

The economic damage of obesity to our country is staggering and continues to grow. According to a 2012 study by Cornell University’s John Cawley and Lehigh University’s Chad Meyerhoefer, obesity-related illness costs the U.S. nearly $200 billion annually, or 21 percent of our medical spending.

Second, financial problems can lead to health problems and vice versa, a cycle that can become a costly Catch-22. Financial stress can cause anxiety, migraines, insomnia and other physical ailments. It also can mean skipping routine medical checkups, not discovering important issues about your health and making poor dietary and other lifestyle choices. Over time, this can lead to bigger, costlier health problems, which in turn can produce ever-greater financial distress.

A study published in The American Journal of Medicine in 2012 stated that more than 62 percent of U.S. bankruptcies in 2007 were attributable to medical problems and were part of a troubling trend.

Finally, there’s the grim reality that poor health cuts lives short. Besides the tragic truncation of a loved one’s life, it’s also the tragic truncation of a financial legacy for the spouse, children and grandchildren.

While money can certainly help you improve and maintain your health, too much focus on earning it can be unhealthy, too. In fact, some scientists believe the stress of competition in American society is one of the many factors that explain why the U.S., despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, is far from the healthiest or longest-lived.

So, protect your health — and your wealth potential — by balancing work and play. Be responsible about your career and your physical well-being by exercising, eating right and taking time to relax and enjoy life.

Phoebe Venable, chartered financial analyst, is president and COO of CapWealth Advisors LLC. Her column on women, families and building wealth appears each Saturday in The Tennessean.