Body Banking

The Real Health Savings Account

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today."

Chinese Proverb

Health savings accounts are plans offered by banks that allow you to save money and withdraw it tax free to pay for medical expenses. These are great options for people with high deductibles in their medical insurance plans. The reality is however, that health care isn't actually for health. It's for disease. Investing the things that are most likely to prevent you from getting the things you'll need insurance for aren't free in the truest sense of the word but the returns they bring are worth their weight in gold.

Generating robust savings is about developing small, consistent habits that add up and accrue interest over time. While the amounts of money can make a difference it is more important to make good decisions with what you've got. If you start saving $100/month starting at 25 through 65 you will have $1,176,000 dollars in the bank.

Compounding interest isn't just for money. It works for health too. Small consistent habits add up over time. It's great to have influxes of intense focus and effort for health. That's like getting a bonus at work. It's nice when it happens but that you can't count on it to sustain you for the long haul. There is just no replacement for decades of steady savings.

Money For Nothing

Everybody pays for health. The question is whether you pay on the front end or the back end. Most of modern health care, even the most well intended forms often have you wait until there is a problem to move the needle in the right direction. This is like only paying interest on a loan. You can stave off the creditors but you won't ever make any real head way. Better than waiting until your bank account reaches zero dollars is to have a strong sense of your finances.

Human beings are built to look for the least energy cost to achieve an outcome. It's part of our evolutionary programming. So we often look for hacks, pills, and supplements that can save time and energy and keep us from investing energy if we don't have to. Most of the things that fall into that category are the get rich quick schemes of the health and performance industry. While there are some supplementary tweaks to a healthy lifestyle that can squeeze out another 3% of feeling good the 90+% is from the most boring, basic tings you can think of done with unwavering consistency. Kind of like saving $3 a day for 30 years. Not sexy, but it works in spades. 

Regular Investments

Investing in your perfomance longevity whether you are just looking to enjoy life more or you are performing at a high level in sport or work is about small, consistent, and even redundant investments in health. Going to bed on time, exercising, enjoying time with loved ones. eating clean food in moderation, avoiding drugs and alcohol, and managing stress are the component parts of the $100/month into your health savings.

Here's the thing they don't have to be invested perfectly all the time. Some months might be $120, some might be $80. Maybe as your bank account gets bigger you can invest more. Maybe life hits you and you can invest a little less. The main thing is that you keep investing in yourself. The advantages to this will create a snowball effect that will may not build you into a tycoon, but will definitely keep you from going broke at the first sign of trouble.

Robust Finances

Building robust health is really not that dissimilar from robust finances. If you have robust finances it doesn't necessarily mean that you're rich (but that can help). It means that you can not only handle what regularly demanded of you but that you can also handle the unexpected. If you suddenly realize that your car needs to be repaired and you live paycheck to paycheck - it's going to destabilize your life more than somebody who isn't. By the same token, if you have an opportunity to invest some money with a good return but you live paycheck to paycheck you won't be in a position to take advantage of the opportunity in front of you.

What does that have to do with health exactly? Everything.

If you've been making deposits into your health and wellness for years and you need to spend some of that capital you can spend it without worrying if it will break the bank. That can mean not only protecting yourself against prolonged frailty if an unexpected health challenge arises (a bad case of the flu or an unexpected injury) but also that you can take advantage of opportunities and adventures that pop up too. Playing with kids and grandkids, having energy to be aware and engage socially, and just simply to learn and explore more of life. 

Some friends and I were talking while we were on a hike recently and one has a touring company that serves tourists that come to our little beach town for vacation. One service he used to offer was a two hour historic bike tour of the Old Beach part of town in Virginia Beach. He mentioned that it was not at all uncommon for people to be completely exhausted by a two hour casual bike ride on flat land with frequent stops to talk about various historic landmarks. Some could not even finish. They didn't have enough in the bank for a simple family outing.

Making small investments in our health isn't just about looking and feeling a certain way. It's also about having enough to more fully engage with life and maybe even a surplus that will allow us to serve others. 

Fortunate Son

The democratization of genetic information has made us all more aware the impacts our family history can have our propensity for health and performance. Some people are born with genes that make it harder for them to process certain foods, more likely to get heart disease, or metabolic disorders. But where you start isn't all that matters.

It's true there are some of us who are born with more money in the health bank account than others. The starting lines of life are not even and they never will be. With that said, you can piss away a fortune or you can go from rags to riches. Get me? What important is that you make informed choices that allow you to build up reserves when possible and have the ability to spend big if you want or need to without breaking the bank.

Pay Up Sucka

The human ancestral environment used to require a certain level of robustness just to survive. Over time humans came up with systems to make ourselves even more capable in these environments. Ancient practices like yoga and martial arts have been used by humans as ways to make regular deposits into the health savings account for millennia. Only the modern technological environment has made it so easy to be unaware of our own fragile condition so it behooves us to pay closer attention to what the bank balance says.

Paying into a health savings account isn't just about putting money in the actual bank for a rainy heart attack day. That's like waiting until you win the lotto to pay off debt. Small investments in your own health through consistent behavior builds a reserve of capacity that if a threat to life or health or opportunity to enjoy life more fully arises you'll have enough in the bank.

You can hide from debtors of health for awhile but eventually the debit card says no more cash available. It might be on a bike ride with your kids or it might be when you have a heart attack. Nobody knows, but one thing is for sure. Everybody pays.

Thanks for reading,

Rob