The Foundation Before the Foundation

In my line of work, the word foundation almost always means money.

The portfolio is the foundation, or the estate plan is, or the income strategy that holds everything else up, and we spend careers helping people pour that concrete carefully.

The longer I reflect on our research, though, the more convinced I become that there is a foundation underneath that one.

When the Oath Money & Meaning Institute asked retirees whether they wished they had done anything differently, the most common answer had nothing to do with saving more. Forty-one percent said they wish they had taken better care of their physical health earlier in life, ahead of the thirty-four percent who wish they had worried less about having enough money.

The people who have actually arrived at retirement, looking back with full information, rank their health above their money. Their spending agrees, because when our latest survey asked what people cut back on this year, dining out, shopping, and travel led the list, and almost nobody delayed medical care.

People already know. When retirees make real decisions with real money, health is the line they will not cross, and every financial plan I have ever built carries the same silent assumption inside it, which is that there will be a person well enough to live the life the plan was designed to fund.

So rather than end this letter by telling you health matters, which you clearly already believe, I want to name what the basics actually look like, because they are simpler than the industry that sells them.

Walk every day, and if you can, take that walk early, when the light is good and the heat has not yet arrived.

Cook at home more often than you eat out. Keep protein on your plate, since holding onto muscle matters more with every passing decade, and give sugar less room than the grocery store would like to give it.

And do not overlook the people. Time with friends and family turns out to protect health as reliably as almost anything else on that list, which means the lunch you keep meaning to schedule counts more than it appears to.

I will add the obvious, which is that I am a planner and an attorney rather than a physician, and nothing in a letter replaces a doctor who knows you. These are simply the basics most everyone now agrees on.

If retirement has taught you a health habit you wish you had picked up earlier, reply and tell me about it. We will share some of the best in a future letter, and a few of our favorites will receive Oath Play gear as our thanks.

The plans we build assume you will be there to enjoy them. That part of the foundation belongs to you.