Your health is your wealth

As part of the financial planning process, we have three stages of retirement:

1. Active retirement. This is the period when you are enjoying yourself, lots of travel and doing all the things you had put off until you had the time to do them. You are relatively young and healthy and able to get around.
2. Warmth and comfort. The thoughts of airports and travel does not appeal to you. You no longer drive. You prefer to potter around at home, the warmth and comfort of your home being of importance to you.
3. Care home. You need full time care as you get towards the end of your life (not everyone requires this).

Active retirement starts when you retire from work. How long it will last is guess work. It is different for everyone. I have some clients still going on long haul trips while others of a similar age are in nursing homes. It is all dependent on your health. Although we are living longer, we are not living healthier lives.

There are an estimated 55,000 people diagnosed with dementia in Ireland and this expected to increase to 141,200 people by 2050. The World Obesity Federation predicts that over half of the world's population will be overweight or obese by 2035. The cost of keeping an unhealthier, older population alive is crippling health services around the world with soaring costs.

Prolonging your own active retirement is dependent on staying healthy.

Regular exercise

Stay active. It doesn't matter what you do, but you need an activity. Going the gym, swimming, walking clubs and of course, playing golf. Not only is regular exercise a good way to stay active and to meet new people, it also acts as an early warning system.

If you start having difficulty in doing exercises that you could do with ease before, that's your putting sounding the alarm. Don't brush it off as nothing. If you are having difficulty in lifting weights you could lift before or getting around the golf course, go get it checked out.

Medical check up

We get our car serviced annually to make sure that everything is working alright. We should be doing the same with ourselves. And just because a doctor says there is nothing wrong, it doesn't mean you don't go back until you aren't feeling well.

Women are much more likely to go to the doctor on a regular basis. Men have a tendency to ignore warning signs and for some, it is a (misguided) sign of their masculinity to carry on despite their being something wrong with them. Get checked out on a regular basis, it may save your life.

Diet

When I was growing up, there was a McDonalds in Dun Laoghaire and after that, you had to go into town. Now, they are everywhere, along with loads of other takeaways. There is so much sugar in Subway rolls that they have been classified as cakes in an Irish court. Poor diets lead to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, all leading causes of strokes.

Not only are processed foods unhealthy, they are so full of sugar and salt that they deaden your taste buds and you miss out of the wonderful flavours produced from natural ingredients. Cooking healthy, flavoursome food is much more rewarding than eating takeaways and processed foods.

Sometimes medical issues just happen and we are unlucky with them. Lots of them are preventable and they will have a big impact on your ability to enjoy life, especially as you get older. The longer the active retirement part of your life is, the better.

Steven Barrett

18 November 2024