Why knowledge about health and money should be given more priority earlier in life

“Hi Michael, is your father home? I need to talk to him.”

I could sense the distress and urgency in her voice, someone who was at one time so strong, but now sounding helpless and losing control in a weakened state.

“I will get him for you, hold on a second” I said, curious and confused at the same time.

After my father got off the phone, I asked what that was all about. I was all ears at that point after hearing a very intense, emotional discussion centered around health and money.

Health and money.

No matter how we grew up, it seems our parents, for most of us, rarely talked about it. At least in ways that spoke to us that made sense and with the attention and importance it deserved.

Education and the gatekeeping mentality did not help in this regard either. And by education, I mean secondary institutions like high school, as well as colleges and universities.

“I’ve never let my school interfere with my education.”

- Mark Twain

It can be argued that health and money, two essential things that drive or impact many of our decisions in life, have rarely been taught in school the right way. Educational institutions have historically not seized the opportunity to provide students with a primary focus on learning about health and wealth with real world applicability, giving us the knowledge and tools to apply them in our everyday adult lives.

But even knowledge is not enough. Knowledge gives you the tools, but wisdom shows you how to use them and why they are useful, along with the benefits and consequences of applying your knowledge correctly, if at all.

For many, the subject of health and money has always been an abstract place.

Just consider the following:

? Doctors and financial advisors have historically been viewed as GODS in the eyes of society, with invested parties speaking a language foreign to us while protecting their elusiveness and information hoarding instead of breaking down their respective specialties in its simplest terms.

? If the saying is true that “we are what we eat”, then why isn’t nutrition given more priority and study hour requirements in medical school, given that we are moving towards a world where the nutritionists of today will most likely be the doctors of tomorrow, according to many medical experts?

? Financial information about budgeting, saving, tracking expenses, and investing your money were, and still are to a degree for many, akin to perpetuity contracts, publishing, and royalties in the music business, with invested parties employing convoluted language to confuse “outsiders”, meaning regular working people and the majority of adults.

Why haven’t we created a system of like-minded individuals with similar understanding while breaking down the information hoarding and gatekeeping process of these two systems?

Was it, and is it still, done by design?

Why are these questions important? Let’s return to that earlier phone call.

“Your grandmother wants me to get her out of the nursing home and have her come here to live with us. But I can’t do that, because there is no one to take care of her and it would be even more costly here in New York City than it is in Georgia where she is now.”

That was the first time I thought about the connection between health and money, and how little it seemed my family knew about it. I mean, many of my family members were really smart, with many life experiences, like they’ve seen a thing or two.

Unfortunately for my grandmother, being smart did not prevent her from having struggles with money and her health. She lived on a restricted budget out of necessity, while suffering with diabetes and emphysema from smoking cigarettes. She owned her own small, modest home and had a car, but had ZERO financial education and incentive to improve her health.

At the same time, although my father was college-educated and had a well-paying job at the time, he was engulfed in debt to various creditors. I thought to myself, how could people be so smart, yet live very poorly in terms of their health and wealth?

If you give them priority in your life, especially starting at a young age, it seems like having an above average understanding of health and finances can lead to a higher probability of having greater accomplishments in life. They also will most likely have the highest negative consequences if you neglect or abuse them. And they are without a doubt two of the most likely things we stress over throughout our lives.

It’s true that an 18- or 21-year-old with a smartphone or laptop today has access to much more health and financial information than a member of the American Medical Association or a partner with JP Morgan had 15–20 years ago. Despite that, research is showing that worries about health and money are taking a toll on us, leading to some negative impacts on our mental health. But what a researcher can tell me I can also see with my own eyes.

Many of us are struggling throughout the world with health and financial challenges, with limited functional knowledge about preventative health and personal finance. Whether knowing it or not, some of the players in those industries are possibly still operating in a system with terrible incentives, with some well-intentioned, morally good people incentivized to be a part of it that misleads us.

A perfect example is Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox character in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, released in theaters just two months after the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash. Though Bud Fox was not without his flaws, his lesson on the dedication to the almighty dollar at the expense of making requisite sacrifices leading to a dark place was an important one.

However, despite the film being a box office success and brilliantly capturing a hyper-materialism culture of a system the average working Joe did not understand, it failed miserably as a vehicle for social change.

Many are still struggling to understand the best ways to be healthy and enhance well-being (physical, mental, spiritual, emotional), while paying their bills and taking steps to improve their financial future. Sadly, until we as individuals make a better effort to self-educate about how the world really works and not rely on others to do that for us, we will continue to see generations of adults struggling with their health and wealth.

Yes, it may make us uncomfortable, unlearning things we have learned in the past, or learning something new, while adjusting our mindsets. But building an increased understanding of anything with a transformation information movement in our brains requires sacrifice and work, like anything else where the rewards are great.

And don’t our children and other young people of today deserve that?

Oftentimes our brains want to focus on what’s safe, feeling that is what is needed to be safe and thrive. But the reality reveals what we really need is focused education (formal or otherwise) on feeding our brains with the knowledge and wisdom about health and money. At the same time, having a focused energy to also share that knowledge and wisdom can create a world that is more beautiful and aligned in a new reality, benefiting us in the realest sense imaginable.

At least that’s what I’m hoping for.