“Modern medicine has increased life expectancy – over the past 100 years the global life expectancy has more than doubled. But, this has not necessarily been accompanied by an equivalent increase in healthy life expectancy. People are living longer but many of those years are burdened by chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and even cancer. This is where it’s important to understand the difference between lifespan and healthspan.
Lifespan is the total number of years we live whereas healthspan is how many of those years we remain healthy and free from disease.” Institute Public Health
How do you get the balance of enough money in your life; keeping healthy; and living longer?
So often we all talk about making sure you have enough money for your lifetime. Planning is considered based on how long you may live. Yet the quality of life is much more to do with healthspan.
Should you, therefore, think about how much money is enough for your health span and how much money you need for your lifespan? There are likely to be differences.
You could run out of money in your healthspan but still have enough for your lifespan.
In conversation with a client, we talked about ‘rainy day money’. Essentially that’s an emergency fund. As you get older your definitions of what may be an emergency can differ. Yet, the client explained the rainy day money is now. In other words, it’s a time to spend your money in your healthspan time. And remember money is simply for spending. Enjoy when you are healthy enough to do so.