We all know the saying that time is money. It may well be even more valuable, because we cannot actually buy time with money. Still, it is possible to earn money by investing our time wisely. When we view our daily exercise habits in this context, it may initially seem that exercise takes up time—time that could instead be spent working and earning money or with family. We know that in return we get a sense of well-being, positive emotions and good health. Even so, it can feel like a trade-off: you give up your valuable time on one side and receive benefits on the other. In fact, in addition to losing working time, you also lose money because you pay for a gym membership. So where is the sensible balance between the benefits and the costs?
Would you believe us if we said that by investing time in exercise, you do not lose time but actually gain it? What if we said that exercising regularly increases your income? Don’t believe us? But it does. Let’s break down the math.
Gain 20 years by exercising
A well-trained heart beats 50 times per minute at rest, while a moderately trained heart beats 70 times. The difference is 1,200 beats per hour, 28,800 beats per day and more than 10.5 million beats per year. It has been calculated that the human heart beats a total of 2.6 billion times over a lifetime (one example of such an article can be found here). If we convert those beats into years, the results look like this:
- 50 beats per minute – 98 years
- 70 beats per minute – 71 years
That is a net gain of 27 years. Let’s subtract a couple of years, because during the hour you devote to exercise each day, your heart beats an average of 150 times per minute. That is around twice as fast as a less well-trained heart during the same hour. Even so, you are still left with a gain of 25 years.
Exercise itself also takes time. Let’s say that reaching a level of fitness that brings your resting heart rate down to 50 requires working out 7 times a week. That is 364 hours a year, which over 98 years adds up to 4 years and 1 month spent exercising. Even after that calculation, you are still more than 20 years ahead.
Improve your quality of life
It turns out that exercise does not use up your time—it actually gives you more of it.
What would I even do with all those extra years as an old person, a skeptic may now ask. What matters is not how long you live, but how you live. True, but these figures also favor people who are more active. Their quality of life is simply better.
According to Statistics Estonia, the average life expectancy is 74 years for Estonian men and 83 years for women. Men in Estonia live 54 healthy years and women 58.
In Sweden, men live an average of 73 healthy years—19 years longer than in Estonia. Only in good health can a person enjoy life to the fullest. In Sweden, they may even be able to run around.
Sweden has a higher standard of living than Estonia. Could that instead be why people live longer? A better life certainly helps, but is that the whole explanation? Apart from the average salary, where else is there an important difference in our lives? The correct answer is our level of physical activity. Let’s look at the comparison of physical activity in Estonia, Finland and Sweden published by the Estonian Ministry of Culture.
| Estonia | Finland | Sweden | |
| Active 5+ times a week | 7% | 17% | 14% |
| Active 1–4 times a week | 28% | 52% | 53% |
| Total active | 35% | 69% | 67% |
According to this table, the proportion of people with an active lifestyle in Sweden and Finland is 50% higher than in Estonia.
Financially, exercise is an expense
Firstly, you have to pay to work out. But there is undoubtedly also an alternative cost—the so-called opportunity cost, or lost income. If you assume that exercise takes up around 4% of your time, or roughly 30 hours a month, then at an average hourly wage of €10, it costs you €300 in time every month. That is a tidy sum if someone were to simply hand it to you right now.
In fact, this coin also has another side. You have probably heard of studies showing that physically active employees and school students achieve better results. Better results lead to promotions at work and higher-paying jobs. That was an analysis based on gut feeling, but studies have also been conducted.
In his book “Beauty Pays”, Daniel Hamermesh summarizes studies showing that people whom others consider more attractive are more successful in life. The calculations showed that they earned around 4% more than someone doing similar work who was not considered equally attractive. Discrimination? Probably. Unlike a woman—whom it would seem silly and, of course, expensive to surgically turn into a man to avoid the gender pay gap—you have the opportunity to come out on the winning side of this discrimination. It is a fact that an athletic appearance is generally regarded more favorably than a non-athletic one.
If we now weigh a slightly higher salary and greater productivity at work—which is also reflected in your pay—against the monetary cost of the time you lose, then even at the most conservative estimate, the numbers ultimately come out equal. In fact, I am quite convinced that you will not end up out of pocket for your exercise habit; it will pay you back in real money.
How can you be even more efficient?
A few final thoughts on how to make your exercise habit and healthy lifestyle even more economical.
Let your employer pay
You gain a great deal from your healthy lifestyle, but your employer also benefits. A fit, successful employee is every employer’s dream. If your employer has, for some reason, resisted supporting exercise until now, remind them that more than 1,200 companies in Estonia support their employees’ healthy lifestyles through Stebby. If your company does not yet do so, you can of course be a flagship in your own way—but whether being a flagship of backwardness is a badge of honor is another question.
Work out at home to save time and money
If the main reason you work out at a gym is not to train with your group of friends, it is also worth calculating how much time you spend getting to your workouts. After all, in addition to the workout itself, getting there also takes time. If you discover that a full hour of your day is spent simply traveling to and from the gym, perhaps there are more sensible alternatives?
If you have 20 workout days a month, that adds up to 20 hours and €200, based on our earlier hourly-rate calculation. Working out at home is also cheaper in itself. For example, the monthly fee for FitQ home workouts is around €50 less than a monthly gym membership. Add those figures together, and saving €250 a month by working out at home sounds like a pretty good deal. Would you take the money?
If working out at home does not fully replace a real gym for you, you could consider swapping your unrestricted monthly membership for a daytime plan that costs half as much. The gym is quieter in the middle of the day, and getting there and back will certainly take less time than during rush hour. So there are still more ways to save. If you can also negotiate an extra hour for lunch with your boss so that you can fit in a workout, your exercise routine would be a dream.
If you have an amazing tip for saving time and money that we did not mention, came up with a good idea or would like to challenge one of our thoughts with an observation of your own, feel free to share your ideas with us by emailing blog@fitq.me
