Staying Healthy and Wealthy After Retirement

One of the biggest issues facing those ready for retirement is how to stay healthy and wealthy after retirement. Escalating health care costs, rampant inflation, and longer life spans have all made retirement a time when both health and wealth take on supreme significance. Although many resources exist to guide you on the financial aspects of a good retired life, most tend to ignore the health aspect. In fact, the two can be more interconnected than you think. Staying healthy and wealthy after retirement are actually two sides of the same coin. If you are a person who is in good health, who neither smokes nor drinks, you are already well on your way to greater wealth. The magic of compound interest can totally change your life. Most people have to struggle through their working lives to pay off their mortgage, or other loans. Just by the simple expedient of improving your health and giving up smoking and drinking, and taking up regular exercise, you could have paid the debt, and accumulated substantial savings much earlier. Smoking, for example costs you a fortune every year that you continue. It costs you an enormous amount of money, first of all as the cost of the cigarettes. To check exactly how much, multiply the cost of the number of packs you smoke per day, by 30, and then by 12. This is the annual amount you spend on cigarettes alone. Add to this the additional cost of extra healthcare and medical bills, due to smoking related illnesses, and you confront a staggering amount. There is another aspect however. The long term damages of smoking include the higher chances of heart disease, and cancer. All of these factors can take a chunk out of your retirement income, for medical expenses, doctor’s visits, and long term hospital care. Plus, there is the increased cost of insurance. All in all, it is an enormous amount of money. Instead of using this money to ruin your health, you can stop smoking, improve your health, and save the money at a high rate of interest, or invest it, for the future.

If you are even an average drinker, you probably consume about two pints of beer a day, not counting the wine and the hard liquor. Multiply the amount of money you spend on drinks per day, by 30 and then by 12, as above, to see how much you spend in a year. If you gave up drinking now, you would have an extra cash buffer of this amount, multiplied by ten, in ten years! Just staying healthy can make you truly wealthy after retirement. Combine the two figures above, and opt for a healthier lifestyle. If you choose to invest in high return investments, or the stock market, you could easily double this whopping amount by the time you are ready to retire. Add to this all the short term as well as long term savings on medical bills, doctor’s visits, hospital care, and interest and insurance rates, and you can be really rich by retirement.