Wealth Over Health

Why You’ll Take $6,000 Over Better Health

A few months ago, I met Andrew, a financial planner whose boyfriend, Jake is a doctor. As he described his work to me, I couldn’t help but remark on the similarities between financial planning and medicine. Both he and Jake have patients/clients with whom they communicate on on a consistent basis. They are also both responsible for maintaining important components of their patients/clients lives — their finances and health respectively. But Andrew later shared some interesting anecdotes that shed light on an unexpected difference between these two professions.

Andrew receives frequent calls from many of his clients, sometimes just to chat about family or current events. One client even requested that he spend three days with her in the Bahamas, drinking margaritas and picking out timeshares — but mostly drinking margaritas. Jake — the doctor — on the other hand, has difficulty maintaining even annual contact with his patients and when they come in to talk there is less opportunity to build the same kind of relationship that Andrew has with his clients; its straight to business.

While Andrew and Jake might not be the most quintessential exemplars of their professions, the truth is, people seem to hold their checkbooks closer to their hearts than they do their health. We make health sacrifices every day in favor of saving money, saving time, propelling our social standing, etc. Why don’t I bike to work instead of taking the bus? Why don’t I prepare a salad instead of grabbing a massive steak burrito? Why don’t I play football instead of sit on the couch watching other people play football? It’s about time and money.¹

It might not even be that we care about time and money more than our physical well-being, it’s just that they are easier for us to think about. There are two issues we encounter when conceptualizing health that do not exist for time and money: quantification and cause and effect. To demonstrate, let’s try a thought experiment:

What would you do with $1,000,000? If you don’t live in California where Uncle Sam pockets a good chunk of your money, you might buy a house or a Tesla as those who’ve made it like to do. Or if you’re a pragmatic Silicon Valleyite keeping up with the Joneses, you might invest in a startup some guy you met on Caltrain co-founded. Either way, there is a clear vision of what you can and cannot do with this money all the way down to the last cent.

Now, what would you do with excellent health? There’s the first problem — what the hell does excellent health mean? While no one has come up with any sort of dollar equivalent for health,² the quantified self movement is pushing towards it.

Those involved in this movement try to measure every aspect of their lives. They've got fitbits and fuelbands and gizmos and gadgets galore to measure everything from sleep to step count. The problem is, at the end of the day, all we can do is put this data into pretty graphs showing upward and downward trends. So you walked 200 more steps than yesterday? Cool story bro. Honestly, the body is a really complicated place and we’re still a long ways away from accurately quantifying health even across just a few metrics for specific diseases.

Ok, back to the scenario: assuming we had some way of deducing that you were in the top 10% healthiest people in the US (like you would be in the top 10% wealthiest with $1M), what does that actually get you? A faster mile time? Probably. Better looking abs? I hope so. How about a longer life? Perhaps. The issue is that even with great health, there is still uncertainty that lies in genetics and the environment.

I have this strange disposition to have disproportionately large biceps. Cool right? Nah — it’s to the point where if I work out for an extended period of time (which I don’t), I start to resemble something like Pop-Eye the Sailor Man. Humor aside, there is an array of chronic conditions that range in seriousness and visibility that cannot be changed even through medical intervention.

Suppose you do not have any of these genetic predispositions. If you’re eating right and working out with the aim to live longer, you might as well not leave your house because the probability of you dying in a car accident is higher than you think — unintentional injuries was the 5th most common cause of death in the US in 2011. The environment we live in, like our genetic makeup, is beyond our control, but plays a massive role in our overall health.

The point is this: we favor money over health most of the time because it is better quantified such that we understand exactly what it gets us. But building on that, the moral of the story of the financial planner and the doctor is that gratitude comes from understanding.

So, Andrew, you’ve helped me divest in Zynga and now I have $6,000 more dollars to kick around this week? Great, I’ll buy you copious libations and also that Les Paul Guitar I’ve had my eye on. You are essentially giving me the guitar.

So, the exercise regiment you’ve suggested seems to be making my heart stronger? Thanks, Jake… But it’s hard for me to be truly thankful when I don’t know (and truly understand) what this actually gets me in life, unless of course the stakes are higher.

So, you’ve removed a malignant tumor and there are no more traces of cancer in my body… How can I ever repay you doctor?

The truth is, I’ll take $6,000 over a “healthier heart” any day, but when it comes to life and death, its a different story. There is no amount of gratitude that I could give a doctor who saves my life or the life of a loved one, such a deed is simply not quantifiable.

¹ Obviously there’s social utility to some of this as well. Staying out late drinking copious libations is clearly destructive to your health, but its great for your social standing.

² Though, there was a film released in 2011 called In Time, which was about a world where the economy is based on time and individuals’ wealth lies in the minutes they have until they die — did I also mention Justin Timberlake is the lead actor?