What Worth is Wealth, Without Health?
By Ian Byrne
As financial planners, we spend countless hours optimising portfolios, minimising tax, and structuring wealth. But after three decades advising high net worth individuals and their families, I've learned that our most valuable conversations often have nothing to do with money or wealth.
Last year, I sat across from a successful businessperson who'd built and sold a remarkably profitable business empire. As he was on the cusp of retiring, on the recommendation from both his accountant and then his friends who also are my clients, he sought my advice and wanted a frank review of everything to do with his future planning.
Our meeting went quite well, he opened up willingly across all aspects of his life, his entities, assets and wealth but more importantly, his primary concern of maximising his time with his adult children and grandchildren and passionately ensuring they were "looked after”.
The conversation that changed everything
Our meeting went for quite a reasonable length of time as he was very thoughtful and well spoken, and as we talked, he opened up quite frankly about how he had lost his wife to illness several years prior, and he and his adult children helped nurse her through twelve agonising months.
As we discussed in more detail his retirement priorities – valuable time with family, travel, not only watching but spending quality time with his grandchildren as they grow – I found myself wondering, as it was evident he was significantly overweight and visibly struggling with various mobility although he was only in his early sixties.
It got to the point where I had to ask an important but difficult question, and nothing to do with money.
After hearing the heartache he and the family endured with his wife’s illness, I questioned whether he would ever like to see his family - the ones he loved the most and deeply wanted to protect - ever go through that exercise again, how he intended to ensure they didn’t have to for him, and what he intended to do health-wise now he was retired, no longer working and had more time on his hands?
For several seconds, he sat frozen. This successful, accomplished almost-gruff-like former businessman, and a small frown crossed his face (and to be honest, a small part of me wondered if I'd overstepped). Then his eyes glassed over, nearly in tears.
"The hundreds of horrid, horrible hours," he said in a low voice choked with emotion, recalling those final months. "I never want my family to endure that for me." He paused, then admitted what we both knew: "I've let myself go. I've known it but haven't addressed it."
Then he thanked me – profusely – for being frank enough to raise it, especially in a context that made him realise what was truly at risk wasn't just his situation, but his family's as well.
The transformation
When we met the following year, I hardly recognised him. He'd lost substantial weight, was fitting into clothes unworn for years, and looked not just fitter but younger and genuinely happier. During our meeting, he enthusiastically described activities with his grandchildren that would have been impossible twelve months earlier – small hikes to swimming holes he enjoyed as a kid, playing cricket in the backyard and even bicycling, which he never thought he’d do again "...and the first few times, my backside wished I hadn’t!”.
Research consistently supports what I have witnessed over 30 years to be true:
· Recent research from the British Medical Journal found that people who maintain healthy weight and regular exercise after 60 have a 35% lower risk of developing dementia.
· A Harvard study showed that strength training twice weekly can reverse age-related muscle decline, improving balance and reducing fall risk by 40% (no, the gym isn’t just for the young or for body-builders!)
· A comprehensive study in The Lancet found that maintaining physical activity after 60 can add up to five years of healthy life expectancy.
· The WHO reports that regular exercise reduces the risk of cognitive decline by 30%, and
· Research from the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that even modest weight loss in older adults significantly improves mobility and independence.
Why successful people overlook health
In my experience, incredibly intelligent and successful individuals often neglect their health precisely because of their success. The decline is incremental – a few kilograms here, missed workouts there, a couple of extra drinks to take away the stress after a busy day – nothing terrible and all justified by the pressing requirements and pressures of building wealth, managing businesses, family demands, travel and a ‘busy’ lifestyle.
"I'm too busy" becomes the perpetual excuse. But retirement removes that excuse entirely.
How can you be too busy for your own welfare, once time is yours?
I have found the truly successfully happy and content retirement clients recognise this and act decisively - slowly , surely, steadily aiming to improve their health by even little things across the week. They apply the same discipline and intelligence and sensible approach that built their wealth to rebuilding their health.
I've seen this pattern repeatedly. When your financial security is no longer a major concern, those who look after their health simply as a sensible way of life, have less illness and accidents as their bodies are able to better function, and hence longer, happier active retirement years.
The vast majority of my clients have more than enough aggregate wealth to outlast their lifetime; do you want to give it all away sooner than you really should? Or perhaps worse, have more and more of it dramatically eroded by potentially unnecessary health-care costs?
Our role transcends money
I believe as advisers, our responsibility extends far beyond markets and returns. Yes, we must deliver smart strategies, optimal structures and attain appropriate risk adjusted returns; but primarily, we're here to ensure clients live their best possible lives and enjoy the active, fulfilling retirement they deserve – for as long as possible, with money just one of the tools to help do so.
Sometimes as truly caring professionals, that means asking uncomfortable questions. Sometimes it means addressing what clients know but haven't confronted. The conversation might feel awkward, even presumptuous, but when framed correctly and with compassion – focusing on family, legacy, quality of life and how the clients foresee their own future – these discussions can be transformative.
The ultimate return on investment
We meticulously calculate investment returns, but what's the value of an extra decade of healthy, active life? What's the worth of being able to walk your daughter down the aisle, teach grandchildren to fish, or travel independently at 80 or even 85?
These aren't just quality of life issues – more importantly, they're about legacy. Not the financial legacy we spend hours structuring, but the lived legacy of presence, participation, and memory-making with those we love most.
Your wealth means nothing if you're not healthy enough to enjoy it. And the families you're working so hard to protect? They'd trade every dollar for more time with you.