Building Wealth and Losing Weight- What is the Connection?
Building wealth and losing weight are difficult. There is a lot of interest in achieving both. In fact, each topic has countless “influencers” online sharing the “hacks” to achieve success. But are there actually hacks to achieve success? And if so, what are they?
Short answer is yes, and no. As a financial planner and someone that has been on a weight loss journey I have found there are a lot of correlations for succeeding in each area.
Wealth influencers often talk about ways to shortcut the system without budgeting or using the “secrets’ of the wealthy. Weight loss coaches pitching a program say you can loose weight without tracking food or working out.
On the other extreme is the health people talking about how you have to so many different things to optimize your health like eliminate seed oils, eat low carb, don’t eat food from plastic, only consume certain types of organic such and such. Or from the wealth side, put your money in only this type of investment or here is what the wealthy do with their money, blah blah blah.
Some of these concepts can be helpful, but they also muddy the waters and create more friction and doubt in getting started. Or you keep trying to find the perfect “hack” rather than mastering the fundamentals and building from there.
And the fundamentals are tracking your calories in vs calories out and tracking your spending vs your income. I don’t deny that it is possible to lose weight without counting calories or build wealth without budgeting, but in my experience the surest path to success it counting your calories and tracking your spending. Best part, you can start this today! You don’t have to go to the grocery store to buy certain foods or do hours of financial research.
If you are on your journey to health and wealth, just start. Once you have all that down you can then move on to optimizing with certain foods and certain financial strategies. So many people delay getting started or drift off the path before they need to because budgeting and tracking calories can be boring and difficult at first. But it works.
Now this is a combination of eating less but also exercising more. Don’t forget the exercise part. Just like in finances, you can reduce your spending but also focus on earning more. Working both ends of the spectrum increases the margin you have therefore improving the results.
What is tracked is improved so you can use paper and pencil, spreadsheets, or an app. I don’t have any affiliation with any budget app or fitness app but here are a few you can check out, there are many more beyond these:
Calorie tracking:
My fitness pal https://www.myfitnesspal.com/
Lose it: https://www.loseit.com/
Budgeting:
Every Dollar: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/ramseyplus/everydollar
Tiller: https://www.tillerhq.com/
Monarch Money: https://www.monarchmoney.com/
Of course there are factors that effect how quickly we make progress with our health or wealth such as profession, family life, hormones, and more. But if you can focus on spending less than you earn and save what is left over, you will increase your net worth overtime. If you can find ways to consume less calories than you burn in a day, over time you will decrease your waistline.
There will come a time where you will need some additional strategies. But for now, master the basics.
I hope this offers some encouragement on your journey and please reach out if I can help you along the way.
Phil Francois, CFP®
https://www.foundationwealthplanning.com/