These are illustrative numbers, not definitive estimates:
Let’s make some base-case assumptions. The most important assumptions are:
- A 50 year old male who doesn’t exercise can expect to live to age 80
- That same male who puts in 8 hours per week of exercise can expect to live to age 88.
- We will measure investment and return in terms of hours per year
- We assume people value their waking hours, and sleep 8 hours a night. We don’t count the 8 hours of sleep as “return” though you of course could decide to do so.
- The exercise continues every year, even after age 80
- The exercise costs only the time allocated to it and provides only the expected extra years of life (i.e. no “disutility” or “utility” except the expected life extension benefit[14] )
- Everything else is constant
Given these assumptions, we can compute a “rate of return” just as we would with dollars.
When we do so we find that the return on investment is 5.8%.
Here is more from Roger Silk, including a table of sensitivity parameters, from his blog on investing.
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