My best performing investments - Part 1: Health
Key points
Your health is a huge part of the wealth you enjoy in life
Four vital principles for investing well
Invest for the long term, when you don’t see the benefits right away
As you age, your energy will influence your happiness more
Three main investment strategies that give excellent returns.
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Image: Insung Yoon on Unsplash
How to become truly wealthy
I'm a very wealthy man and I'm about to share with you the secrets to my success. Not everyone would be willing to share how they got so wealthy but I'm happy to do so if it will help you build yours.
It hasn't always been easy and in some phases of life, I seem to have gone backwards. But that's the nature of investing. Sometimes you lose, but if you do your research and learn the right skills you can do really well in the end.
Four Vital Investing Principles
Firstly though, there are some fundamentals that underpin the best wealth-building strategies.
You simply cannot create wealth without a desire to do so. You need determination, discipline and resolve.
You cannot spend more than you have. If you do, you will never build significant wealth (or any wealth at all).
Wealth comes by doing the small things, consistently over time.
Not all investments have the same return so you need to know which ones will give you what you're looking for without risking your capital.
Right, let's look at my wealth and how I managed to build it to the significant levels I have today.
Investment 1 - Health
"When you're young, you spend your health to get wealth. When you're old, you spend your wealth to get health." ~ Rob Bialostocki
That’s true, isn’t it?
Today, I'm in reasonably good health and it's one of the best assets I have. In a way, it has outperformed all other asset classes although it's by no means the only asset I have, or even always the most important one.
With this amazing asset, I’ve managed to:
Go trekking over a volcano with my daughter Sophie (see below)
Go tramping in the Routeburn Track in Winter
Go fly-fishing up remote rivers
Travel solo for 10 weeks around the world, including some physically demanding locations (Rajasthan and South India)
Paint the house, fell a tree that was too close to the house, and help someone build a deck
Bike to the gym, do weights, and bike home again.
I’m thankful for good genes, but there’s a lot more to this investment than that.
As you get older, your energy will determine your life
One consequence of getting older - I'm 64 as I write this - is that you pay less attention to what people think and more attention to your energy levels. You begin to realise, perhaps a little too late, that your energy will determine your enjoyment of, and contribution to, life.
Here are the specific health-building strategies that I've employed:
1. Eating
I've cut down on processed foods, maximised fresh fruit and vegetables, limited my portion sizes, and avoided most sugary and starchy foods.
2. Exercise
I confess that I take a moderate approach to this because I'd prefer to do something consistently than start with a hiss-and-a-roar and stop shortly afterwards. So, I walk the dogs every day and go to the gym twice a week for strength training.
3. Sleeping
I've stumbled onto a brilliant personal investment strategy - taking a nap every day. Yes, despite this being normally associated with old guys, I've found it really helps to pay attention to my body and take a nap when needed. That way, I can continue to invest in the rest of the day with much more energy.
So it's a good return.
I've lost 5 kilos, a few centimetres off my waist, and look and feel better than I have in the last 10 years.
Don’t fail to invest
The ironic thing is that these strategies are basic, simple, and well-known and yet many people fail to invest accordingly. As a result, their health is not providing solid returns.
Is yours?
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