Keys to a Long Life: Diet, Exercise… And Investing

New Year’s resolutions are on the way. Here’s a novel reason why becoming a better investor should be one of them. 
January 1 is a little more than a week away. Time to improve the diet and implement an exercise regimen. After all, a healthy diet and vigorous exercise are proven longevity extenders.

But don’t forget your brain. It plays an important role in longevity too. Your level of optimism, your willingness to embrace the future, your ability to forestall gratification are all important factors in extending your lifespan. Your brain (therefore you) demands a reason to hang around until tomorrow.
Investing is one of those reasons.
When you invest, you sacrifice current consumption for future consumption. By investing, you’ve committed yourself to the future. This commitment gives you a reason to embrace the future. It gives you a reason to look ahead.
There is evidence to back my investing-longevity thesis.
Some of the greatest investors were people who lived a long time. Walter Schloss, Jack Dreyfus, John Templeton, and Paul Cabot all lived to age 95. Philip Fisher lived to age 96. Philip Carret lived to 101, and Roy Neuberger made it to 109.
Even today, many of the great living investors are well into their ninth and 10^th decades: Warren Buffett is 84, T. Boone Pickens is 86, Charlie Munger is 90, Kirk Kerkorian is 97. The longest-lived of them all, Irving Kahn, is 109. What’s more, these great living investors continue to invest (even Kahn). They embrace the future. They have given themselves a reason to get up in the morning.
That investing exercises the brain is surely beneficial to maintaining cognitive ability into old age.
The High Yield Wealth newsletter exercises the brain. I exercise my brain analyzing and presenting stock recommendations. Our subscribers exercise their brains contemplating my analysis: Does the logic make sense? Does the investment fit within the context of your own portfolio?
Income investing, the kind we do at High Yield Wealth, requires patience and a commitment to the future. Time is required for cash payments to accumulate and for asset prices to appreciate. Time, in turn, instills a sense of equanimity, which I believe also contributes to longevity.
Investing can be frustrating; price appreciation rarely materializes as expected. But the longer you invest, and the more you factor in the importance of time and patience, the less frustrated you become. I’m rarely frustrated by an investment. As long as it continues to distribute cash at a rising rate annually, I know that price appreciation will eventually follow suit.
Investing entails sacrifice, and that too can benefit the brain. Scientists have shown that we actually experience more satisfaction working toward a goal than achieving it.
This makes sense. Consider tomorrow, Christmas Day: The days leading up to Christmas really are more pleasurable than the day itself when you think about it. In fact, the day itself is, in many ways, anticlimactic.
I experience the same anticlimactic feeling when selling an investment. Analyzing an investment, watching the investment grow my cash account, and anticipating price appreciation are much more rewarding and invigorating than selling the investment to book a gain.
When investing is viewed as a continual process – which I believe is the correct view – there is no end. The investor is always interested in tomorrow.
My goal for you and I is that we both have at least one more reason to experience many more tomorrows. And by that, I mean many more profitable tomorrows.
To help get started on your journey to profitable tomorrows, the team at Wyatt Research has produced a special report titled The Top 10 Stocks for Big Profits in 2015. This report features some of my top dividend investments, as well other stock picks – many priced for strong capital gains.
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