H&W Heart Health & How to Diversify

Nate Crosby |
Categories
health and wealth

Happy Valentine’s Week! We’re deeming this week the week of love. What better way to celebrate than to go over the heart! We want you to make sure your heart and your investment portfolio are in tip-top shape.

Why Keep a Healthy Heart?

  1. As if this weren’t obvious, to stay alive.

  2. Reduce feelings of depression.

  3. Maintain cholesterol and blood pressure levels. If these levels get to dangerous numbers, clogged arteries and stroke can occur.

  4. Lower your risk of developing dementia. Narrowing vessels from your heart not pumping strong enough can cause a lack of blood flow to your brain. This leads to an inability to think and reason normally. 

How to Keep a Healthy Heart?

  1. Follow a healthy diet. Add more fruits and vegetables and decrease your alcohol and sugar intake. Make sure to incorporate healthy fats like avocados, whole eggs, and nuts. Start your morning off right with this avocado toast recipe

  2. Exercise regularly. It’s recommended to get 150 minutes of exercise per week. That breaks down to about 22 minutes a day. You can even break that up into smaller time segments (10-minute walk break anyone?)

  3. Maintain a healthy weight. Obesity can cause the heart to work harder as well as lead to fatty build-up in the arteries. 

  4. Avoid smoking. Enough said. 

Diversification: The heart of investing

In the investment world, there’s an old saying ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch but diversification is the closest thing you can get to a free lunch.” 

Diversification involves the spreading of risk over many investments. “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket!” Your mother might have told you that at one point.  In other words, we don’t want to hold all the same types of securities in our investment portfolio. In the past investors would consider themselves diversified if they owned many different stocks, but that only means they were diversified among stocks.  Anyone who remembers the Covid downturn of 2020 knows all stocks went down initially when the government shutdowns began.  To be truly diversified we want to own more than just stocks.  Modern portfolios go beyond stocks and bonds.  Personally, I like to own 5 or more different asset classes: stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, commodities, alternative investments, and even some cash.  The economy is very complex and there are more opportunities to grow besides stocks and bonds. 

We recommend diversifying your portfolio.  

 As always, please don’t hesitate to give us a call to review your accounts and make sure you’re taking advantage of that free lunch!