How To Have a Long Lifespan, Healthspan & Wealthspan With 3.0 Level Thinking

How long should you expect to be retired? 

You want your money to last the rest of your life. How long will you live? 

What quality of life will you have? What will your lifestyle cost you when you are older?

What if you could:

1. Live longer (long lifespan).

2. Be healthy longer (long healthspan).

3. Have financial freedom longer (long wealthspan).

In my latest video and podcast episode I talk about: 

• Why it’s smart to plan for a longer life.
• New thinking in medicine to help you live long & be healthy.
• New thinking in personal finance to keep you financially free for life.
• What is wrong with mainstream medicine & personal finance.
• Create your own “Centenarian Decathlon”.
• Why “First, do no harm” is wrong for doctors. What did Hippocrates actually say?
• How to create plans for a long lifespan, healthspan, and wealthspan.

New thinking in Medicine & Personal Finance

Great book “Outlive” by Dr. Peter Attia, MD. Recommended to me by my doctor & my personal trainer.

Medicine 1.0 (2000 year ago) – Observations. Physical.

Medicine 2.0 (starting about 1850) – Scientific method. Focused on curing disease & preventing death.

Life expectancy doubled the last century.

What does Medicine 2.0 do for you? Only slight increase in healthspan, but prolongs life when close to death.

Medicine 3.0 (recent, but not mainstream) – Focus on prevention. Thinking longer term about maintaining healthspan and lifespan 30+ year in the future.

Key concepts of Medicine 3.0 (a few that caught my attention):

• Planning when much younger. Taking preventative medications, tests and other actions long before you have any significant health problems.
• E.g., lower blood pressure & cholesterol early, even with medications. Test for cancer before age 50s.
• Build up your physical fitness so you are healthy decades from now.
• New concept: “Healthspan”. How long do you expect to be healthy to live your desired life – not just how long are you alive.
• Don’t wait until you are sick to act. Don’t wait until you are old & weak to act. 

How can we have the best chance of being healthy?

• Start preventative medicine or tests years earlier to detect health problems early.
• Target lower blood pressure & tests for early signs of diseases much earlier than Medicine 2.0.
• Build up physical capacity when younger, since you lose it quickly as you age.
• Muscle mass typically 40% lower at 80 than 25.
• Lose muscle strength 2-3 times more quickly than muscle mass.
• Lose power (strength & speed) 2-3 times faster than muscle strength.
• Lose speed & endurance.

Nutritional biochemistry – Not diets.

• Eat less. “Stay slim.”
• Most people get far too little protein. You cannot build or maintain muscle mass without enough protein. Most of us need 2-3 times the protein we get. 
• Importance of sleep & emotional health.

Who follows Medicine 3.0? Dr. Peter Attia mentions a bunch of other doctors.

• Private doctors (with MD). Not generally covered by insurance in the US.
• Not covered by Medicare in Canada. Our doctors, including family doctors, are self-employed working on piece work. No code for most preventative measures or counselling.
• I go to a private doctor that is expensive, but focuses on prevention & early detection. Probably need a private doctor to focus on prevention.

Parallel new thinking in personal finance.

• Finance 1.0 (till about 1960) – Focused on interest & guaranteed returns, like bonds and whole life insurance policies. Worked okay with life expectancy in the 40s.
• Finance 2.0 (since 1960 & increasingly since 1990)
• Minimum financial plans assuming you will spend less as you age.
• Equity or balanced investing in mutual funds or ETFs, active management or index, with focus on short-term risk tolerance (3 years or less).
• Average portfolios are much larger than 100 years ago (accounting for inflation).

What does Finance 2.0 do for you? 

Most people save far too little. No proper financial plan and investing too conservatively. You see how many stop travelling in their 70s or 80s.

Finance 3.0 (recent) – Thinking long-term. 

Key concepts of Finance 3.0:

• Focus on financial freedom & providing for a 30+ year long retirement.
• Financial Plan. The GPS for your life. Know what you need to do to have the future you want.
• Investing for growth. Long-term risk tolerance shows stocks to be the low risk investment (after inflation). Essentially nobody can retire comfortably with the 5%/year return of a balanced portfolio.
• Long-term thinking must be after inflation. Inflation keeps increasing your cost of living. E.g. With 5% inflation, a 5% return on your investment is zero.
• Financial freedom. Financial plan gives you confidence that you can live your desired lifestyle no matter how long you live. “Wealthspan.”

Who follows Finance 3.0? Fee-for-service financial planners & some podcasters/bloggers.

• Difficult to follow for investment industry because of sales pressures and compliance rules.
• Mainstream doctors are not paid for Medicine 3.0 – prevention. Mainstream investment industry is not set up for financial plans & growth investing.

Why should you plan to “Outlive” with lifespan, healthspan & financial freedom?

• We save for a comfortable retirement. How do we know we will live that long and be healthy to enjoy it?
• Key to a great retirement is money & health.
• Many people think they will travel less after age 80, but our retired clients over 80 tend to have money, and if they are healthy, they travel as much as they did when they were younger. Often more luxury travel and less active travel.
• We are living longer. Average life expectancy doubled the last 100 years from ages in the 40s to the 80s. Average life expectancy from birth is 83, but that is averaged down by young people.
• Expect a retirement of 30+ years. For people age 65 today, 50% of men live to age 89 and 50% of women live to age 91. 50% of couples have one person that lives to age 94.
• Planning for a 30-year retirement means there is a 50% chance you will run out of money and at least one of a couple is still alive.

I’ve been on a search for how to live longer for 15 years. My grandmother lived to age 109 and was fully healthy until age 101. Very inspirational!

• Preventative plan with longevity doctor since my 40s.
• Now a private doctor paid for preventative plan.
• Personal trainer. Exercise that works.
• My own exercise before that didn’t show results.

Steps for 3.0 Thinking

1. Plan your life:

You can plan to live longer, be healthier, and be financially free until age 100+!

How do you want to live after you retire and when you are older?

Centenarian Decathlon – What 10 activities that are most important for you to do at age 100 to still fully live your lifestyle? Plan for the future lifestyle you want.

Example Centenarian Decathlon:

1. Hike with a backpack.

2. Get up from the floor.

3. Lift a child.

4. Carry 2 grocery bags.

5. Lift a suitcase into an overhead compartment on a plane.

6. Balance on one leg.

7. Have sex.

8. Climb stairs.

9. Open a jar.

10. Swim.

Your ability for all of these declines over time, unless you focus on maintaining them, and unless you plan ahead to be able to do more than each of these when you are younger.

• Invest in your health when younger. These are all correlated with life expectancy:
• Aerobic stamina. Endurance. Run or walk fast for 20-60 minutes.
• Maximum aerobic output. Maximum speed for short bursts.
• Grip strength. Proxy for overall strength, plus ability to protect yourself in a fall or accident.
• Balance/stability. Ability to sit on the floor and stand up using only one hand (or without hands). Falls at older age can lead to rapid decline. Remember, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
• You lose these steadily as you age, so it’s important to build them up when you are younger, similar to your retirement portfolio.

Personal finance: Plan for the future lifestyle you want. 

• E.g., Travel, entertainment, where you want to live (different places for different times of the year?), cars, helping family, or charity to make a difference in the world.
• Financial Plan: Create a Financial Plan to include your desired lifestyle & enough money to be confident you can live it for as long as you live.
• Having a Financial Plan is the only way to be confident you will have the life you want.
• Create your plan to Outlive (lifespan & healthspan) and your plan for financial freedom for life (wealthspan).

2. Think long-term about risk and growth:

In both medicine & finance, focus on long-term risk & long-term growth.

Doctors’ advice is not: “First, do no harm.” Often quoted, but wrong.

Hippocrates never said or intended, “First, do no harm.” This never appears in his writings at all.

He actually said, “Practice 2 things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient.”

First is “help the patient”.

This is critical, because if doctors actually do the lowest risk thing, they would often do nothing. Surgery always has risks from cutting into a person, which is certainly “doing harm”, but most of the people that get surgery are far better off. All medications have a list of possible side effects that could harm the patient.

The focus for doctors is on “help the patient”, which often involves doing something inherently risky.

Medicine 3.0: Think long-term about creating the life you want.

It is not minimizing risk or “harm”.

Finance 3.0 – Think long-term about your financial freedom. Plan for a 30+ year retirement and invest for growth to achieve it.

In finance, risk is the risk of not having the 30-year retirement you want, not a temporary investment decline.

The investment industry is focused on your risk tolerance, but investing too conservatively probably means you are not going to have the future life you want.

From doing thousands of financial plans, almost nobody can retire with a return of about 5%/year that a balanced or 60/40 portfolio should give you long-term.

Yet these are the standard portfolio of the industry.

Financial advisors are strongly encouraged not to invest too risky by the regulators and their compliance department, so they tend to have balanced portfolios not focused on growth.

• Effective investing should give the highest chance to give you the future life you want, which requires a high equity allocation for most people.
• Equities (stock market investments) are the highest return asset class. Most people will need $2-3 million portfolio or more to retire with the lifestyle they want. You need strong, long-term growth to get there.
• Equities are also the most reliable long-term. The 20-year risk (standard deviation after inflation) of equities is lower than bonds or cash.
• Over 25 years, every year had strong gains. The worst 25-year calendar return in the modern stock market (S&P500 since 1930) is 8%/year.

New concept: “Wealthspan”: How long do you expect to be confident you will have financial freedom to live your desired life.

New thinking in medicine is similar to new thinking in investing. Think & plan long-term and take the necessary actions to live long, healthy & financially free.

Summary:

• Mainstream medicine & personal finance are stuck in level 2.0 thinking.
• Both medicine & personal finance level 3.0 thinking is based on planning for the life you want and thinking long-term about risk & growth.
• 3.0 level thinking is available for both, but you have to find it & learn about it. Mostly private doctors and fee-for-service financial planners.
• 3.0 involves effort & sacrifice.
• Preventative medicine & exercise involve effort to find what you need & to do it, and some pain (exercise). No pain, no gain. You can learn to love the feeling of vitality from being fit.
• Effective long-term personal finance involves effort to create your financial plan & follow it, and some pain (discipline for saving & investing and experience with investment ups & downs). No pain, no gain. You can learn to love the confidence from having a large & growing portfolio, and being confident in your financial freedom.
• Live the life you want with health & financial freedom.
• Plan for the lifespan, healthspan & wealthspan you want.

Ed