Looking after yourself a good investment suggestion
The life expectancy in the United States dropped in 2015 compared to 2014. This also happened in the UK recently.
In other words, regardless of the medical progress in our world, life expectancy in the US and UK isn’t rising at the moment and may well be starting to fall. This is despite the very large health benefits of there being far fewer smokers.
The US statistics are very interesting – check out online “Life Expectancy In US Drops For First Time In Decades”. Deaths from cancer have gone down, possibly because of fewer people smoking and better medical care, but many other types of deaths have gone up and mortality rates have gone up for most age groups.
It seems that the obesity epidemic that has been developing in Australia as well is finally showing up in mortality statistics as putting on too much weight seriously impedes our health.
From a financial advice point of view, declining health is a serious problem for several reasons: As we get older, we need to spend more money on health care and we are less able to enjoy our retirement and, as in the UK and the US, we may have less time to enjoy our health! In addition, the less healthy we are, the less money we are usually able to earn.
The main group of people whose life expectancy has dropped in the US is white males. It is not entirely clear why but reasons that have been put forward are the worsening job prospects for those of any age without university education and an epidemic of over usage of opiates, mostly in the form of painkillers. My opinion is that it is connected to the very large increase in our body weight – for example 45 year old women today weigh on average 8kg more, without being much taller, than 45 year old women weighed 20 years ago.
In other words, one of the most important pieces of financial advice is: Both insure and look after your body – your health affects your earnings, your wealth, your enjoyment of your wealth and how long you will live.
It is a good investment proposition to look after your health, well-being and body and have insurance so if something does happen you and your family are taken care of financially.
