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On July 13, the title of this article was corrected to read, "Why Do So Many Americans..." instead of "Why Do So Few Americans..."
One in four Americans didn’t get a routine medical checkup in 2019, and 3.3 million have never had a regular checkup. These alarming statistics were presented in a March 18, 2020, Business Insider article by Zoe Ettinger. The flipside of these numbers – which sounds much less alarming – is that 75% of Americans did get checkups and 99% have had a routine checkup at some time in their lives.
Why do so many people pay attention to their health? The answer may seem obvious. Ignoring your health is the fast lane to reducing your quality of life and even prematurely ending your life. It just makes intuitive sense to pay attention to your physical health, which is one of the three major components to wellbeing.
Given that we understand how important it is to take care of our physical health, it puzzles me why we give so little attention to the two other major components of wellbeing: our financial and emotional health.
What would the reaction be if statistics showed only 17% of Americans had a family physician and that 75% of Americans relied on themselves for medical knowledge? There would be widespread alarm in the medical community and within various federal, state, and local governments. Billions would be poured into advertising to educate Americans on the urgency of taking care of their health. Campaigns would raise awareness of how neglecting one’s physical health financially impacts all Americans, raising taxes and requiring governments to needlessly spend trillions on costly health care that could have been easily and much less expensively avoided with prevention.
Yet the actual statistics that only 17% of Americans have financial advisors and 75% rely on themselves for financial knowledge raise no alarm. According to a CNBC article by Jessica Dickler from April 2, 2019, 75% of Americans manage their own finances with no help from a professional or online service. Only 17 percent said they use a financial advisor, which is even less than the 19% of Americans who use a mental health professional.
