Let's get physical and watch your wealth grow

Include physical activity in your working day and reap financial benefits. Photo / Getty Images

Health and wealth do more together than simply rhyme.

Improving your health can in many ways improve your wealth, money experts say, by saving money and creating a mindset to breed financial success.

Businesses have been jumping on the bandwagon with incentives to make money from your movement using fitness tracking devices and smartphones.

Qantas Assure allows people to earn frequent flyer points based on the steps they do, while Medibank and flybuys teamed up to offer 10 flybuys points every time the health fund's member does more than 10,000 steps a day.

Affinitas Capital senior adviser John Purl said insurance companies preferred healthy members who rarely were sick.

Mr Purl said there were many other ways to save money and build wealth by being active.

"Try walking meetings outdoors," he said, adding that the fresh air could also inspire fresh thoughts," he said.

"I try to say to people incorporate movement throughout your day as much as possible. It could be using a stand-up desk, taking the stairs as opposed to the lifts, or walking to a postbox further away."

Riding or walking to work and sending documents to printers on the other side of the office were other ways to increase activity, Mr Purl said.

Workers should also leave healthy snacks in their bottom drawer rather than raid lolly jars, he said. "Try not to operate throughout the day with brain fog and sugar highs."

No pain, no gain is a popular saying in the gym, but the mindset created from being physically uncomfortable can also flow through to being willing to be mentally uncomfortable by investing in areas you may previously have avoided.

Wealth for Life Financial Planning principal Rex Whitford, who rides 15km each way to work three days a week, said stopping smoking delivered a double whammy in benefits. Quitting's health benefits were widely known, and nonsmokers avoided the Federal Government's massive tax take on every cigarette sold.

"I like seeing smokers because I love seeing people pay tax I don't have to pay," Mr Whitford said.

He said wealth also improved peoples' health because "you can pay for the things you need to do to have a longer, happier and more fulfilled lifestyle".

The key for being both healthy and wealthy was to stop procrastinating. "People put stuff off because it's hard, but once you get used to it habits are formed — whether that's exercise or saving money," he said.