You may have heard it said that if you don\’t have your health, you don\’t have anything. Now that may be a stretch, but I would agree that you can\’t fully enjoy all of the other aspects of life if your health is not intact. If you or a loved one has ever dealt with a significant health issue, you may see the truth in that. We have all seen those people who are very successful in the world\’s eyes but are not in good enough shape to enjoy life.
Failing health can be similar to a grim financial picture in that it can consume your thought life and cause you to feel hopeless and defeated.
You\’ve probably heard the saying that it\’s not about the number of years in your life, but the life in your years that matters.
I\’m paraphrasing, of course, but how often can aspects like our health and financial standing cause us to view life from a lens of doom? This is why I usually recommend not making any large decisions when you are under a great deal of stress. When you are dealing with anxiety, you will feel backed into a corner, and that sense of hopelessness can lead you to make poor decisions about your health and finances, maybe even both.
Although it\’s easy to correlate financial and physical health, \’health\’ can be defined differently depending on the person. So whether it be the Circulatory, Digestive, or Nervous system, to name a few. Much like your finances, you may look fit and healthy on the outside but have underlying health issues or rifts in your financial picture. You may physically look good or even be internally healthy and struggle with mental health. The systems of the body are more connected than we care to think; much like stress that releases cortisol, causing various parts of the body to react, financial decisions can ripple through your financial picture affecting other decisions.
Sometimes it\’s easy to justify that splurge of a purchase or that cheat day, not realizing the effects and unintended consequences it can have on your finances or diet.
This may be obvious, but perspective, diet, exercise, sleep, and water all affect your health. So many components feed into a healthy lifestyle, but everybody is uniquely different, although needing the same essentials to stay healthy.
Thinking through how much sleep your body needs, how much water you should be drinking based on your body composition and climate, as well as caloric intake, amount of activity or exercise, will pay dividends in the long run though. Making sure that you understand what essentials work best for you and then budgeting based on those aspects that are of most importance.
So bringing this back to your personal finances, you can take each aspect of your health needs and create a line item in your budget or Plan to Spend for saving for a new bed to sleep better, groceries that feed you the nutrients you need, a gym membership or trainer to keep you active or regular massages or other aspects of maintenance.
So think about what is essential to your lifestyle to maintain the proper body composition, energy, and overall health. Think through what you are prioritizing now based on your spending habits and how much it would cost to care for your health properly. If you go back over your expenses for the last three months, you may consider placing a positive next to those that had a positive impact on your health and a negative for the opposite effect. This will help you better align your purchases with those aspects that actually impact your health.
CTA:
My call to action is to seriously look at the components of your health and how to budget based on those needs.
