I’ve been listening to a podcast for a couple of days now, from Dr. Peter Attia, on women’s health.  It’s a long episode, almost 2 hours, and the level of detail and specificity is both interesting and frustrating.  I love listening to Attia and Huberman, hearing their guests discuss all of the ongoing scientific research and data on the human body, specifically women, and the lack of historical studies as well.  It’s something that matters a lot to me, on my journey seeking healthspan – a term I borrowed from Dr. Attia himself in his book Outlive.  I had kids late in life.  I’m particularly obsessed with the caregiving phase of life and what it means for all of us human beings, and so in my own life, I’m driven to push and stretch my own healthy years so that I can remain independent.  My children will likely need to care for me at some point – but I’d like to hold it off as long as I can by making good choices with my health now.   

It’s overwhelming though, all that is and isn’t out there to tell us what choices are “healthy.”  Get enough protein – don’t eat too much – but you need a lot of food to get enough protein, and you should eat whole, natural foods to get it.  No overprocessed foods if you want to be healthy, but protein must be supplemented because you need 120-150 grams a day and protein bars and powders and shakes are processed foods.  Also women need to be tracking their phase in the menstrual cycle, hormone levels, body temp.  We should be taking peptides for cognitive and physical function.  There is simply so much out there.  It’s not easy to understand, for those of us who are not scientists.  It’s complex, technical, sometimes conflicting, and all of this comes together to make it feel like so much we should just ignore it.  After all, isn’t reducing stress healthy?  I don’t want to learn it all.  I don’t want to know my VO2 Max every minute of every day.  I don’t even actually understand what that means.  And I don’t really want to. 

It’s the same with our money though.  I know that it’s so easy for me to slip into jargon in a conversation, or on a podcast, or in my writing.  Throwing around ‘marginal tax rates’ and ‘Backdoor Roth conversions’ and so on.  It’s clear to me because I’ve spent so much of my life steeped in this language, but this is not everyone’s full time job!  We cannot expect ourselves to become technical experts at everything we need – no way.  There’s no time to do that in our day to day lives.  Any spare minutes we have as working mamas should be devoted to REST.  At least we do know that sleep and rest are super good for our health! 

Whether it’s our health or our money, we can’t ignore it. It simply matters too much.  We want to… I want to.  Like anything else, there are stretches of time where I do ignore it – so I’m not here to make anyone feel remotely guilty about that.  What I am here to do is help cut through the noise.  If you’re overwhelmed, confused by conflicting advice like “never have a mortgage” and “leverage, leverage, leverage” – I’m here for that.  Just like a personal trainer helps in the gym, a financial advisor helps to focus on your individual situation – not just your goals, but also, your current reality.  Just like a mom of 3 kids under 5 is not going to be in the gym 12 hours a week unless that is her actual professional career, a mom of 3 kids under 5 is also probably not going to be in her peak savings point.  And that is absolutely ok.  We start where you are, we figure out how you got there, and build a map for where you want to go.  How we get there, the journey – well that’s where the fun is at.