Every New Year’s Eve, millions of Americans resolve to get healthier and wealthier. Publishers grow rich on sales of self-help books about ways to accomplish these resolutions. But a year later, the same millions of Americans are back making the same resolutions. Why do people so often fail at these two desired goals?
Barbara O’Neill and Karen Ensle, faculty members at the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES), think they have an answer. After doing extensive research on the financial aspects of health, the researchers began to notice a pattern: The fundamental strategies recommended for health were very similar to the expert advice on increasing wealth. But the existing literature examined each of the areas on its own, when the two are intertwined.
“Health and wealth should be viewed as concurrent goals; both are essential to a happy, successful life,” said O’Neill, an extension specialist in financial resource management for Rutgers Cooperative Extension. “If you concentrate on work so much that you don’t have time to exercise, it is possible that you will be spending all of your hard-earned money treating illnesses in the future. Conversely, a person who ignores their personal finances as they train for marathons may eventually become ill in response to the stress of insufficient funds for retirement."
O’Neill and Ensle, a family and community health sciences educator for Cooperative Extension in Union County, have developed a financial health initiative, “Small Steps to Health and Wealth” – 25 strategies, or small steps, that can be applied to health and wealth goals. They don’t expect people to adopt all 25 strategies; in fact they advise against this. Instead, they recommend the “Jersey Diner Approach”; that is, each individual should choose three to four items that appeal to them the most.
The strategies include proactive measures such as “Track Your Current Behavior,” "Make Progress Every Day,” and “Compare Yourself to Recommended Benchmarks." Each suggests specific behavior changes that will improve health and wealth. People are encouraged, for example, to track both eating and spending patterns to assess their status in each area.
The program, launched in New Jersey March 1, operates in several locations, including the Cook Campus, and Cape May, Sussex, and Union counties. O’Neill and Ensle have compiled worksheets and tables to guide people through each recommended strategy. There is an array of interactive tools, such as tables that show the impact over time of saving $20 a week over time, how much people can save by adding 2 percent of their salaries to a tax-deferred savings plan, a body mass index chart to see if they maintain a healthy body weight, a list of calories expended in common physical activities, and more.
The researchers have issued a challenge for Rutgers faculty, staff and students to form teams and participate in the program. On their website, they also offer individuals the opportunity to register and to have their progress monitored by extension faculty. Researchers at Rutgers and the University of Arizona will examine participant data to determine the impact of the program.
Strategies, worksheets, and tables can be found on the NJAES website or in the Small Steps to Health and Wealth workbook.