Financial Opportunities Uncovered: A Keeler & Nadler Family Wealth Podcast

Balancing Your Physical and Financial Well-being: Surprising Parallels and Practical Strategies

• Andy Keeler

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Have you ever noticed how the discipline required to maintain physical health mirrors the discipline needed for financial success? This fascinating connection forms the foundation of our exploration into the parallels between physical and fiscal fitness.

Andy and Mark dive deep into the striking similarities between wellness and wealth-building, revealing how mastery in one area can translate to success in the other. They share their personal fitness journeys—from Andy's nightly ice cream back in the day to Mark's not so friendly relationship with running for cardio — to provide relatable context in showing how consistent changes compound over time in both health and finances.

The conversation uncovers powerful parallels: the "dietary budget" concept showing how proportions of nutrients mirror the balance between expenses, savings, and taxes. The critical role of diversification in both exercise routines and investment portfolios plus the compound effect where small daily decisions create dramatically different outcomes over decades. 

Perhaps most compelling is their discussion of hormonal and psychological responses that drive behavior in both domains. From the ghrelin hormone affecting appetite to the dopamine rush of investment gains, understanding these mechanisms helps explain why maintaining discipline can be challenging in both fitness and finance.

At its heart, this episode asks a profound question: What's your "why" behind pursuing both health and wealth? As Andy points out, "What good is money if you're not around to enjoy it?" The most sustainable motivation comes not from vanity or comparison, but from deeper values like being present for loved ones and maintaining independence as you age.

Whether you're fiscally savvy but physically struggling, or health-conscious but financially disorganized, this episode offers practical strategies to leverage strengths in one area to overcome challenges in the other. Join us to discover how the principles that build strong bodies can also build robust portfolios.

The opinions expressed in this program are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations.

It is only intended to provide education about finance, tax, retirement and related planning topics. To determine which investments or strategies may be appropriate for you, consult your financial, tax or legal advisor prior to implementing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results.

Any indices referenced for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. As always please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital; please seek advice from a licensed professional.

Keeler & Nadler Family Wealth is a registered investment adviser. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Keeler & Nadler Family Wealth and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. No advice may be rendered by Keeler & Nadler Family Wealth unless a client service agreement is in place.


Andy Keeler:

Are you fiscally savvy but physically taxed, walking a mile? Are you the model of health and wellness, but in a state of financial disarray? Today, on Financial Opportunities Uncovered, we will explore the many similarities and secrets of both physical and fiscal fitness. Helping me unravel the secrets and commonalities of health and wealth is Mark Beaver. How's your heart rate, Mark?

Mark Beaver:

I think it's okay. At my age I got to warm up for stuff, so I'm nice and loose now.

Andy Keeler:

Well, that reminds me. They say it takes 10 minutes to warm up for every 10 years of your life. So I don't know if I have enough time at the gym to do both that the warmup and the workout. So, as I think through topics for future episodes, I always want to make sure that the things that we talk about are actionable, things that folks can actually use or implement. And I struggled kind of at first when I was thinking about fitness physical fitness and financial fitness. There are so many similarities I don't know if we'll have time to cover them all. How can you actually take those things and make your life better, either physically, mentally or fiscally? And as I started to think through it, I realized that odds are pretty decent, that someone is either physically fit or fiscally fit. Most people have one or the other. So the idea here is to help folks understand that what works for one may also apply to the other. If you've mastered the secrets of one, you can apply them to the other. So those that know me well know that I need my morning exercise to get my mind straight for the workday. I find mental acuity improves by getting moving and getting my blood flowing. When I was in high school I hit the gym a little bit, really just because I wanted to look good for the girls.

Andy Keeler:

Then I met my future wife in college, took some time off and when I hit about 30, I was kind of unhappy with my level of physical fitness, had a little bit of a spare tire, had a double chin. A lot of people are really shocked to hear that, but that was where I was when I was 30. I had sausage gravy and biscuits probably once a week and this is not an exaggeration. I would make a hot fudge sundae every night. I would make the fudge on the stove, Value Time ice cream out of the plastic gallon container at 3. 99 a gallon. God knows what was in it certainly high fructose corn syrup and something just had to change. I just started with portion control. I ate the same things. I had the sausage gravy, but I didn't finish everything that was on my plate.

Andy Keeler:

And what was interesting was growing up. My father grew up in the Depression. He was born in 1919. And had he seen how I was leaving food on my plate and eventually throwing it away, he would say you're wasting food. And my response would have been yes, but I'm going to live longer and it's more or less a deposit that I'm making in my own health. So then I started, in addition to the portion control, I started working out, hitting the gym. Three days became four, became five, became seven, and then I realized, you know what? I need some rest. So I started taking Sundays off and then from there I just started to put together the kind of the combination of diet and exercise, and I realized today that there are so many similarities between that and budgeting and the discipline that it takes to build wealth over time. Mark, what's been your fitness journey?

Mark Beaver:

I can relate to some of the on and off periods. I started actually like athletic kind of training at 12. I was a pretty big kid at 12. I grew fast so I was a lot bigger than kids back then. But I remember working out with an older friend of ours in my basement lifting weights around that time and then getting into sports you know, football team and working out with the football team. So I was pretty aggressive about it in high school. F rom a lifting perspective other than that, other than strength training and athletic training, I wouldn't say I was living the healthiest life, cause you're in high school and you can eat whatever you want and it doesn't matter, and you know. So I was kind of one of those scenarios, um, that continued into college. I think that the reason for it changed. I wasn't doing it for athletic performance, it was just I like to lift and I'm going to keep doing that. Somewhere in college it drifted off and, you know, just became more leisure, I would say, you know, in my, my lifestyle at the end of college and that showed, uh, so eventually got got that turned around after college and then we had, you know, got married, had kids, entered another period, like you said. Maybe it's something that happens in your, your late twenties, early thirties, or something we uh, me and my wife would. Actually, we would eat dessert every night too. Uh, it was kind of our nightly ritual. You know, kids are in bed, let's have some ice cream. You know whipped cream, cookies all of it and you don't really notice it. I mean it sort of creeps up on you and then you realize, man, that was I'm pretty winded for just going up the stairs, or when you you really notice it when you try to keep up with toddlers and young kids, and it was just harder than it needed to be, and so that was an eye-opener. And I'd say the last two years for both of us and luckily we're both pretty bought in on it We've changed quite a bit in our life. A lot of it has to do with eating, as you know. I think that you know the 80-20 rule. It's at least 80% what you put in your body. So we're really pretty dialed in on that and enjoying being back in the gym as well, you know we'll explore kind of the level of discipline and commitment here in a

Mark Beaver:

bit.

Andy Keeler:

You know I like to say you can start small with like with personal finance, it's starting saving. You don't have to save 10 percent of your income or 20 percent of your income when you're just getting started, if you start young enough and you can kind of build up to a level of intensity and commitment and discipline that you're comfortable with. So one of the first similarities that I notice between personal finance and nutrition is what I call the dietary budget. So in a dietary budget you have a certain portion of every meal is carbs, protein and fat, and that formula kind of determines the quality of the calories that you're going to get and how your body responds to it. And of course in personal finance you have three categories there as well. You have expenses what are you spending your money on? You have savings what are you saving every month? And the third category would be taxes. So it's the proportion of those that kind of determines both your physical and financial health. Are there other similarities?

Mark Beaver:

I guess real obvious ones that you find I jotted down a couple that came to mind, and one you mentioned earlier is discipline and applying that. I mean it could apply across your entire life, of course, but I think if you went to just someone on the street randomly and you said how could you be healthier, they could get most of that answer correctly.

Mark Beaver:

There's other little things maybe not but they would say eat better and exercise, sure, and that's most of the change they would need to do. Yeah, if you ask someone, how could you be in a better financial situation? Same kind of thing. Well, you know, I just need to spend less than I make. You know, make good decisions, not live beyond my means, invest. You know some simple things like that. We all know that, but very little do we actually do those things. So it's just that discipline factor of we know what we got to do, now go do that thing. And we're nerdy about both of these topics. So we think about all of the super minute details of each of it and it's great, those are really good exercises to do, no pun intended, but at a high level. It's just you know what you got to do, go do that thing. And so I I find that kind of interesting of we all know basically what we should be doing and we just have to have that discipline.

Mark Beaver:

A couple of other things that I thought of was diversification. You know something we've talked about in investing topics before, uh, but sometimes it's easy to just have a lack of diversification in both of these areas. So, for instance, I hate cardio, my dad, my sister, my wife, like running. I hate running. I just don't.

Mark Beaver:

it was all more about. You know, go go as hard as you can, as short as you can. Um. So for me, it's very easy for me to do strength training. It's it's a more of a challenge for me to do cardio training. Um.

Mark Beaver:

So when you think about a well rounded wellness, you know, a program if you will. I t should have cardio, it should have strength, it should have a good diet. You need to have all of those things working for you. If you just do one without the other stuff, that's really not a complete plan. Just like when you think about your finance, you need more specifically, even with an investment platform, you've got to have diversification. You can't just put it all in one stock. You can't just have it all in one area. You need to have these things that make it well-rounded.

Mark Beaver:

And you could also talk about, like you mentioned, having a tax plan and having a retirement strategy and all of those different pieces and parts. It's got to be complete. In thinking about that, the last thing that kind of popped in my head of similarities was emotional triggers and how these things can be very emotional for us as humans and sometimes it's easy for us to have some unhealthy triggers. And you think about where, how we cope with stress. Sometimes that's eating the ice cream. That's our coping mechanism. Sometimes it's going to the store and spending a few hundred dollars, you know, and both of those things we know are not very good for us, but we do it anyway because we think this is going to help us get through something.

Andy Keeler:

So the diversification point, just to expand on that a little bit, my wife and I were talking just last night about folks she knows, know that do hot yoga. Our producer is cheering because he likes hot yoga, but they do hot yoga classes maybe four, five, six times per week and if you saw that person and of course everybody has different fitness goals. Some may be doing it so that they can eat more or eat whatever they want.

Andy Keeler:

Others are doing it to look better or feel better about themselves. But when you kind of fall into a routine and you keep doing that same thing over and over again, your gains are not necessarily as good as if you kind of kept I like to say keep your body guessing. And so, when I work out, I have no two workouts that are ever the same. I do a different workout every single day. I might concentrate on the same body part or have a goal in my mind as something I want to do that particular day, but the specific things that I do are completely different. When it comes to goals fitness goals versus financial goals I think a similarity that's important for us to touch on is the timeframes of those goals and, as I said earlier, start small and start with things that you're able to accomplish accomplishable goals. Someone in their 20s maybe they can't save 10 or 20% of their income, they're just getting started. Their income isn't great, but the fact is they're getting started at all. Fitness-wise, it's the same thing. Maybe you set a short-term goal to do one more push-up tomorrow than you did today, or lose or gain, depending on what you're interested in doing. Gain or lose five pounds in 30 days, so it's not overnight. Financial goals tend to be longer in time frame and not necessarily micromanaged, tend to be longer in timeframe and not necessarily micromanaged. For example, having $15,000 saved for a trip abroad by next summer or to retire in 20 years we have a long time to plan for that goal. So we're not necessarily changing anything every single day, Whereas, honestly, if you really get into the nitty gritty of fitness, you may actually change the things you eat and how much you eat depending on the amount of exercise you have.

Andy Keeler:

I remember I ran into a gentleman in the locker room that I knew ran marathons and he had a boot on his foot and he had crutches and he said I'm really bummed out because I haven't been able to run and I put on a lot of weight. And I said are you eating the same things now that you were eating when you were running? And he said yeah, and I didn't say any more. I think he got the idea.

Andy Keeler:

I mentioned my journey.

Andy Keeler:

It started with portion control. I actually came up with 13 things. These are just things that I came up with on my own that work for me, and I think it's important that listeners understand that everyone's different. So you need to be you when it comes to both fitness and finance. Know your limitations, know what your goals and objectives are, how committed you want to be. The 13 things I won't go through all of them and I'm happy to email that list to anyone that's interested. I'll give you my email at the end of the podcast.

Andy Keeler:

But portion control is one. Knowing what to eat and when, even during the day. Pizza before bed probably not a great idea. Coffee at 5 pm probably not a great idea if you're trying to get a good night's sleep. Drinking lots of water those are just some of the basic ones. But like that whittling away at your personal finance goals, like increasing your savings every time you get a raise or making a commitment to do it annually, whether you get a raise or not, and if the employer matches up to 4%, the obvious place to start is 4%. But use that as your starting point and increase from there. 401ks have this fairly new provision called auto-escalation, where you can check a box and basically the 401k administrator automatically increases the amount that you defer to the 401k every year or so. That's like having a personal trainer to hold you accountable. Maybe you know that you're not going to do it on your own, but if you have an appointment at 8 am every morning with a personal trainer, you're more likely to show up.

Mark Beaver:

And as you were talking, I was reminded of an analogy of what we do as advisors, was reminded of a analogy of of what we do, you know, as advisors and and in some ways you could say, we're sort of like the personal trainer that comes alongside someone and says, hey, you know, here's some things you should be focusing on and here's how you can do this and not hurt yourself. But I kind of think it's a little different in a way, because your personal trainer can't lift the weights for you. You know, you've, you've got to do all that work and in some ways we can sort of lift the financial weights for our clients. We can't do all of it, you know, they're obviously the ones that earn the income and they're the ones that have to decide to, you know, invest it here and there, but there's certain things that we can come alongside them and kind of help lift some of those weights. So I think that's a unique difference in what we do. In that ,something that you said about the timeframes with goals and how that relates to financial goals, I think I could see it kind of both ways in a sense, where I've heard there's a wellness doctor on social media. His name's Peter Attia. He's gotten pretty popular lately, but he has some really great insights and he often will reference wellness as a kind of like compound interest. So obviously that's something we've talked a lot about in this podcast over time. And that's if you need to see an example of that. Think of someone who you know, your friend, that hurt his foot and he can't run anymore.

Mark Beaver:

You know that's going to not just impact that week, but it could impact him down the road, even just because he lost all of that training period. So it's interesting to see the comparisons of that, the comparisons of that. So it's really that our lives really. But anything that we have going on over a period of time is just the accumulation of a bunch of small decisions that we've made.

Mark Beaver:

And that's true in health, that's true in finance too. We just have to do the right things and we have to do them consistently and continue to do that over the long term. So I think that that's an important concept. What is different in the timeframes that you mentioned is, a lot of times the financial stuff we don't see the results for a while. So we're long term investors, which means you need to see those things bear out over time. To going to the gym. A bunch of times I mean you're going to feel it that night or the next day, but you might actually see some results within a week or two weeks or three weeks, Whereas in financial stuff it tends to, you know, need a little bit more time to see the fruit of what you've done.

Andy Keeler:

Keeping that long-term perspective is very important. What I like to tell people that are unable to work out for, say, a week is your body will bounce back very quickly, and so not all is lost. You know, there are folks that will have to have a surgery, or they get a broken ankle and they're unable to work out, and then they I'm never going to get back, and you'd be very surprised how quickly your body can recover from things like that, and actually, that time off may actually propel you to the next level. The compounding interest comment I agree with it from a high level. What I would say, though, is, as I mentioned earlier, if you do the same thing every single day, your compounding to be lower than if you try different things and kind of mix it up.

Mark Beaver:

And it as that example of someone that had a surgery and they were out for a week or two. How different would that these if that happen had been training in a well-rounded program for the five years before that, versus not no training at all? You know how how much better is their body at recovery in that regard. I mean, there's a difference between someone who has been lifting weights since high school, even if it's not a good program, but they, their body's exposed to that. You see that they're going to respond a little bit quicker if they get back into it than someone who's never done this before. Their muscles aren't. They just don't even mentally connect to their muscles as much you know, um. So I think that's what he's getting at with the. The. The compounding part is what you did 10 years ago matters today. You're building on that progress versus not doing it, just kind of being sideways.

Andy Keeler:

It's not the end of the world and it's t hese things happen as I get older. I have aches and pains, and it's very important to not get off track and lose track of the long-term goal. Keep the faith. So it's also interesting are the physiological similarities and differences in how the body responds to diet, exercise and dealing with money. In diet and exercise we have testosterone, of course, which increases when you're under physical stress working out, running, whatever and then there's the hunger hormone called ghrelin.

Andy Keeler:

There's an old NPR story called Mind Over Milkshake, called Mind Over Milkshake, and it's an experiment where they take basically a shake and it's not a protein shake, it's just like you know. It could be Slim Fast, it could be Nestle Quick, whatever it is. It's like a chocolate shake and they label this shake two ways One they label healthy dietary supplement and the other they label indulgence. So the idea is different. People drinking these things get a different mindset as they're drinking this shake. And then they measure the ghrelin levels, which is called the hunger hormone. But it basically decreases your appetite as the hormone levels increase and what they found was endorphin that the people that thought they were eating or drinking the unhealthy decadent shake. Their ghrelin levels increased and they drank less of it.

Andy Keeler:

They go further in the story. They're talking about a guy that gets off work late. He's in New York City. He leaves the office at 8 pm, he goes to a local carryout and buys a frozen pizza and he's thinking to . good for me, eating a frozen pizza at 8 o'clock at night, but he actually eats less of it because he knows it's not great for him. In finance and trading there's a hormone called dopamine and we've all gotten that dopamine rush when we hit it big at a slot machine or betting online. And then, versus both finance and fitness, we have cortisol and endorphins. You get that endorphin rush when you're, either, say, running or working out, but also if you happen to hit it big in, say, bitcoin and your shares increase 20% or 30% overnight. You want more of that.

Mark Beaver:

It's like your success and failure, basically right In different formats. But in investing we've referenced a lot where the pain of loss is twice as much as the benefit of gain. So the market goes up three out of four years on average, mm-hmm. Uh. There's only been, I think, six times that the the annual return has been negative 20 or more in the last hundred years. But that's what keeps us up at night, even though there's been 20 plus percent gains, 35% of the time because of the pain of loss they call loss aversion is so strong, uh, versus the, the good feeling of of things going up. wish that was the same with fitness where, like, if I did something wrong, I feel twice as bad as good. I don't know, I don't know if I have that hormone where if I'm eating something bad, I eat less of it because I can eat a lot of bad stuff and get myself into trouble.

Andy Keeler:

You, you know, the point is made that different people want different. They have different goals. And I have a sister-in-law that is an avid runner. She swims, she runs and she does it because she wants to eat That's what she, that's her goal. We all have different goals, but the whole idea is, if she wanted to eat what she wanted to eat but she didn't exercise, she's not going to live as long. Her husband's retired, she recently retired, and they want to enjoy that retirement for as long as absolutely possible and they can do that because they're both physically active, yeah, and the fact that everybody's got a little bit different makeup.

Mark Beaver:

you know, everyone's genetics are a little different. Not everybody's going to be the world's best distance runner. Not everybody's going to be a huge bodybuilder, naturally, either. Well, none of them are going to be that naturally. I guess, but, um, you know. So just the difference in genetics and it's kind of the same sometimes financially. If you know there's something that's a bigger problem for you, then you should be aware of that. If something that causes you to behave badly, then that's something to be cognizant of and try to avoid that. Or vice versa.

Andy Keeler:

In episode two of this podcast, we discussed blue zones and I remember saying what the heck does a blue zone have to do with personal finance? And the idea is, what good is money if you're not around to enjoy it? So I think it's important that we help clients understand that the social aspects of their friendships and social networks that they have, the physical fitness levels that they have, what they eat when they eat it, who they're eating with All of those things help them live longer and enjoy the fruits of our day, jobs, which is building wealth and helping clients have secure retirements. Any closing comments for us, Mark?

Mark Beaver:

I think that's wonderful. It's a great question to ask ourselves of why are we doing any of this at all? I mean, that's kind of a life question, I guess. But what's your why for this? To steal Simon Sinek's book title, it's easy to see the desire for wealth sometimes as a bad thing if it's for the wrong reasons. Is it for greed or envy, or just comparison with someone you know? Those aren't really great reasons for wealth, and if that's your motivation, you're never going to have enough of it. I think most of the folks that we get the pleasure of working with, if they really stopped and thought about it, that really isn't their motivator. It's probably something that has to do with relationships or something about even responsibility, maybe.

Andy Keeler:

Grandkids. Yeah, you know, they want to secure a financial future for their kids, their grandkids, their great grandkids, you know, and beyond. They want to have an impact in their communities. They want to use the abilities that they have in a meaningful way, you know. So I think those are great motivators for it, and it's always about finding the balance of planning for the future but also living for today, and everyone's going to have a little bit different balancing point for that, but it's really important to explore Because, like you said, you can do a wonderful job planning for the but not everybody, you know, gets the blessing of that. You know some people get it cut short, unfortunately, and so you want to make sure you're, you're living in the moment, living with the people that you care about, doing those things, um, and obviously not forgetting about the future we got that's. That's the challenge, I think, is finding the right balance for someone.

Mark Beaver:

And I understand that, maybe it's you want to run around with your grandkids. You want to see them get married someday, you know. So I think that plays a role in our fitness plans too.

Andy Keeler:

Thanks for the workout, Mark, and, as always, we thank our listeners. Be sure to tune in next time when we explore the changing landscape of the long-term care insurance market. I'm Andy Keeler, and this is Financial Opportunities Uncovered brought to you by Keeler and Nadler Family Wealth. If you have any questions on anything you heard in this episode, or if you would like us to send you the list of the 13 things I mentioned earlier that helped me get on track to a healthier lifestyle, you can email me at andy-dot-keeler, at keelernadlercom, and if you have an idea for a future episode or questions about what you heard, connect with us on LinkedIn.

Mark Beaver:

The opinions expressed in this program are for general information purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations. It is only intended to provide education about finance, tax, retirement and related planning topics. To determine which investment strategies are appropriate for you, consult your finance, tax or legal advisor prior to implementing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results. Any indices referenced for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. As always, please remember, investing involves risk and possible loss of principle. Please seek advice from a licensed professional. Keller and Nadler Family Wealth is a registered investment advisor.