I've got news that you probably suspect is easier to ignore: global life expectancy climbed from 46.5 years in 1950 to 71.7 years in 2022, with projections placing it at 77.3 years by 2050. In Chile, we've reached 81.36 years, becoming the second country with the highest life expectancy in America.

Translation: you'll spend decades being old. Literal decades.

And while everyone fights over the AFPs and the pension system, there’s a reality no one wants to face: by the year 2050, there will be an estimated 2.6 working-age inhabitants for every person over 64, compared to 6.7 people working per senior today.

The math is insane, yet simple: there won't be enough money.

Your molecules are your only real asset

While some gurus sell you the fantasy of living 100+ years, science presents a brutal reality: only 3% of women and 1% of men born today will reach 100 years old. And even worse, life expectancy is DECREASING for Gen X and older millennials.

The cherry on top? A third of millennials already have health conditions that will reduce their life expectancy and quality. We’re aging FASTER than our parents.

A hip fracture can cut your life expectancy by almost two years, and one in five patients will require permanent care. A simple fall can literally cost you millions in care, not to mention total loss of independence. All this while physical inactivity costs the world 300 billion dollars annually. In Chile, the direct economic cost associated with physical inactivity is US$ 69.2 million annually.

Do you get where this is headed? You spend your adult life sitting in an office to save for old age, destroying in the process the only asset that will truly matter when you’re old: your physical ability, your capacity to "live" a life

Who benefits from your current lifestyle

Forget the caricature of Silicon Valley millionaires injecting themselves with teenage plasma or sleeping in chambers

Multicomponent physical exercise is what shows the most significant physiological and functional benefits in older adults, including lowering blood pressure, improving sleep, increasing walking speed, and enhancing quality of life.

But that's why I'm from the future to tell you that starting at 60 is late. Building your "savings account" should have started yesterday because you will never be younger than today. You will never have a better hormonal balance than when you’re younger. If we were taught biology correctly, we would all leave understanding that:

• Your body is a machine that needs daily maintenance.

• Strength is an insurance against fragility, especially bone fragility.

• Balance and agility save you from devastating fractures.

• Cardiovascular endurance keeps your brain oxygenated and functional.

• Muscles are your amino acid reserves for when you're sick.

Every squat, every push-up, every walk is a deposit into your body’s retirement account. The hardest step is the first, but if you don't even take baby steps, your 70-year-old self will never forgive you when they have to change you.

On the other hand, a sedentary lifestyle is a lucrative business. Weak and sick individuals:

• Consume more medications.

• Need more medical services.

• Are more dependent on the healthcare system (public or private).

• Spend more money on crap miracle products.

• Spend more compensating for their low self-esteem.

• In the U.S. they lose over $4,500 annually. By projection, in Chile, it must be around 1.2 M annually.

• 100% certified they suffer from anxiety.

• I could go on, and add more links to studies and reports, but I think I'll let this rest a bit, and let's just say I pulled these numbers out of thin air.

And you know what, let's continue with gut feeling. Do you know any 70-year-olds who can do a deep squat? How many can play with their grandchildren without risking a knee?

The magic of compressing your suffering

Here comes the concept we need to engrain now: compression of morbidity. In developed countries, people who exercise regularly—not as high-performance athletes—have shown to live longer without necessarily spending more years sick.

What does it mean?

That instead of spending 20 years with diabetes, hypertension, on dialysis, or with arthritis, you can compress all that crap into the last 2-3 years of life. It’s the difference between decades of suffering versus a short period at the end.

Moving your butt not only makes you live longer. It also makes you live BETTER almost till the end. This whole chapter is about how to renegotiate with death. "Okay, I'm going to die, but give me 80 good years and only 2 bad ones, not 20 years of misery".

The choice—as always—is up to you: 20 years wearing diapers or 2? 20 years dependent on others or dying in your sleep because one fine day you simply said: you know what, I’m done?

Your true retreat has never been in bitcoins, but in your lumbar muscle.