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Good health includes good financial health

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Vaccines are now reaching the wider community, and spring is near. As we emerge from isolation, there are predictions for the “Roaring 20s” ahead. But is this a good time for an assessment of your financial health?

If you reach your 90s and are in good health, congratulate yourself.  You are among the fortunate. In fact, more and more North Americans are living longer. In Canada, between 1921 and 2011, the average life expectancy at birth increased from 57.1 years to 81.7 years, a gain of nearly two and a half decades.  

In the U.S., the Population Reference Bureau reports that the number of Americans ages 65 and older will more than double from 46 million today to over 98 million by 2060, and the 65-and-older age group’s share of the total population will rise to nearly 24% from 15%.

It sounds promising.  But many people who reach old age are not in good health.  Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. President, had it right. “Old age is like everything else,” he said.  “To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”  If you start thinking about how to pay for healthcare needs when you are already old, there’s not much you can do when a crisis arises.

George Clooney was looking on the bright side when he said, “I’m kind of comfortable with getting older because it’s better than the other option, which is being dead.”  But George Clooney doesn’t need to worry about money.

It doesn’t take a genius to know, you’ll compound any future health challenges by not having enough savings to help you manage the added costs. CARP, formerly the Canadian Association for Retired Persons, reports that 12 million Canadians do not have a pension plan and 600,000 people over 65 are living in poverty.

Across North America, depending on where you live, you can expect wildly different levels of support from governments and employers in the event of a medical emergency.  Canadians tend to believe that a universal healthcare system will look after them in every case.  Americans used to benefit from employer plans that carried over into retirement years. But times have changed.

The Canadian public purse has limits, and as boomers age, there will be hard choices to make. In the U.S. and Canada alike, no matter where you are, private insurance is a good idea.

A recent survey for the Sun Life Canadian Health Index showed that among respondents who have had someone close to them suffer a health issue, 29% indicated it “caused them to re-evaluate their finances.”

A rainy-day fund may not be top priority for people in their 50s who are paying for children’s education, paying off mortgages, and ready to take the next available flight to southern beaches.  But regular deposits into a savings account or low-risk investment can add up over time.  By the time you are in your 70s, needing money to pay for extra physiotherapy, increased dental care, or drugs not covered by regular insurance, you’ll be happy you had the foresight to save.

Take care of your financial affairs. If you’ve got the time to do it, make sure you are investing in your long-term health by paying off debt, living within your means, and regularly setting aside money as a buffer against unexpected healthcare costs. If you are already in your golden years with medical or long-term care costs that are crippling your financial well-being, then talk with an advisor about how to stretch your dollars.  Finally, if you are well along into the later stage of life, then do what you can to inspire your grandchildren to avoid senseless mistakes and to start saving for the big crisis.

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Written by W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million.

His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!”

Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Diana Gifford-Jones, the daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy. Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa. She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health.

For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School. She is also a graduate of Wellesley College. She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy. She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University. She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

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