What investment lessons can we can draw from the 'blue zones' of long life? ANDREW OXLADE
Why would you not want to know the secret of hotspots around the world that have an unusually high number of centenarians?
If not seeking the 100-year life, you might at least hope for some additional healthy years.
Each 'blue zone' has a primary reason for the fizzing zeal of its residents.
You may have digested these silver bullets in the Netflix series created by explorer, storyteller and blue zone founder Dan Buettner.
Or perhaps they have been regurgitated to you at a dinner party. Here's a flavour:
The durable islanders of Okinawa in Japan have been supercharged by a particular type of purple sweet potato, and they garden a lot;
The spritely Sardinians eat well but also walk uphill a lot and particularly in one steep village, perched high above the Tyrrhenian Sea;
The Seventh Day Adventists of Loma Linda in California live a decade longer than the average American. They don't drink, they don't smoke but they also care for each other in a close-knit community that values volunteering.
When I watched the TV series a few years ago, these were the silver bullets that stuck with me.
They all came rushing back on a recent visit to my first blue zone - the Nicoya region of Costa Rica.
Its silver bullet, I read (in the blue zone book in the blue zone shop at San Jose airport) is that they eat a lot of black beans in corn tortillas, made for 8,000 years by mixing some ash from the wood fire they are cooked on into the dough.
The ash breaks down the corn's cell walls, making niacin (vitamin B3) available and freeing amino acids for absorption.
Our need for simple fixes makes for big business, as the blue zone empire shows.
A well-travelled colleague even bought purple sweet potato-infused KitKats in Okinawa.
But it's about more than soot or a single type of vegetable, of course.
Complex factors combine to create regional variability in longevity, as the blue zones narrative acknowledges.
Among laid-back Costa Ricans, there is a pura vida approach to life that reduces stress, for instance.
However, our cognitive biases make us hang on to simple solutions - the single silver bullets.
It can be argued that we do the same with our retirement savings - the very thing that we will need to help us afford the greater chance of a 100-year life.
The boring but very sensible approach to retirement saving is to invest early and create a portfolio of mostly stock market investments. This has worked for generations of savers.
Over longer periods, stock market returns have mostly beaten inflation and other types of investment, such as property or bonds, and certainly money in savings accounts.
But a 'get rich slow' approach lacks the lustre of shiny bullet - and especially for a young generation where the basics, such as buying a home, feel so unachievable. They need quicker results.
Cryptocurrencies are an obvious example where super returns are increasingly expected and sought.
Investors were asked where they anticipate greatest opportunity in our recent BeInvested report.
It found 13 per cent named crypto investments, such as bitcoin. For comparison, only 12 per cent thought investment funds were the best bet.
Crypto enthusiasm was highest among 20 and 30-somethings - 29 per cent of both age groups thought it was the best opportunity for the year ahead.
If you cut the data again, narrowing it down to those who are 'very optimistic' about markets, then crypto emerges as the top asset to back. The excitement is palpable.
A longer-standing silver bullet has been property, and it remains so.
Despite a steady erosion of the tax advantages of buy-to-let and weak house price rises in the last decade, one in 10 investors named it as the best opportunity for the next year, rising to nearly one in five of 30-somethings. The silver bullet belief that 'property is my pension' lingers on.
Also of note is a new love of using ChatGPT and similar AI technology to devise a long-term investment plan.
Bear in mind that the technology was largely unknown a year ago, yet 21 per cent of Gen Z and 17 per cent of millennials are using it to make financial decisions. It's a useful tool but can it really replace an experienced financial adviser?
I risk being labelled a luddite, but my point is not that crypto will or won't be a sound investment or that we should avoid ChatGPT.
This is about avoiding the urge to reach for simple solutions, financial elixirs. And it is also about eggs in baskets.
How to secure a 100-year life retirement saving plan
As with the blue zones of long life, many ingredients are needed for the perfect 100-year life retirement saving plan.
Here are three of the basics:
Start early. Invest £1,000 a year from age 25 and a lifetime of modest 5 per cent annual returns could give you £121,000 by 65. Start at 35 and you would only accrue £74,000.
Harness the power of small amounts. Imagine you paid 10 per cent of a £30,000 salary into a pension from age 25 and received 3 per cent annual pay rises. You could achieve a sum of £504,000 by age 65. But increase the contribution by 2 per cent every five years and you'd be contributing 20 per cent of salary by age 50 and could have accumulated a bigger sum - £770,000 - by age 65.
Diversify. Spread your money around global stock market. Index-tracking funds, also called passive funds, are a cheap and easy option. Consider some exposure to bonds, especially as you get close to retirement or when you might need the money.
Funds can give you exposure to these assets and to quirkier investments, such as gold, prized as a diversifier.
Some of those other single shot solutions, like property, like crypto, can also be held in funds.
And a self-invested personal pension, or SIPP, has many tax benefits, including protection from capital gains tax (CGT). Direct crypto holdings are liable for CGT.
Funds cannot hold cryptocurrencies directly - the regulator won't allow it - but some exchange-traded funds hold shares in companies linked to the crypto industry.
Examples include the iShares Blockchain Technology ETF and VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators ETF.
I personally have a very small amount of my SIPP in the latter.
It's a highly volatile fund and may be totally wrong you.
For me, I get exposure to a speculative area in a micro amount.
The point here is balance. Swamping your diet with purple sweet potatoes will make little difference to your lifespan.
But turning to a wide range of evidence-based, tried and tested common sense approaches, with a little spice, and your health will improve.
Maintain similar principles for your investment portfolio, and so should your wealth.
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Whilst Japanese children enjoy a sweet treat, it's less common to give them biscuits, crisps or chocolate, and to feed them rice crackers instead, Lindsay explains. A particularly popular rice cracker in Japan is 'senbei'. They're low in fat and free from artificial preservatives and additives, being made primarily from rice and baked over charcoal. We know our penchant for sweet snacks is damaging for our health, with countless studies linking sugary foods to increased weight and adverse cardiovascular and metabolic outcomes. It may be worth occasionally swapping out your afternoon chocolate bar for a few rice crackers. Eat until you're 80 per cent full 'Hara hachi bu' is a traditional Japanese practice where people stop eating when they're 80 per cent full. It encourages 'intuitive eating which helps you tune into your body's hunger and satiety signals', says Lindsay. 'We know that it takes around 20 minutes for the brain to realise that it's full so by eating mindfully in this way, you're less likely to over-eat,' explains Ludlam-Raine. Research supports this philosophy. A 2018 review in Current Obesity Reports found that a mindful eating approach such as hara hachi bu can play an important role in weight management and treating obesity. Meanwhile, in Okinawa – a Japanese island where the philosophy originated – residents have far fewer age-related illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, according to a 2024 study. Whilst more research is needed to confirm whether hara hachi bu is the sole driver behind these health outcomes, it's notable that many residents who practice it tend to have lower rates of disease. Serve smaller portions 'In restaurants, particularly when you're outside of the major tourist areas in Japan, you'll notice immediately that portion sizes are significantly smaller,' Lindsay says. 'Obviously smaller portion sizes directly lead to consuming fewer calories. This is key – especially when people aren't listening to their internal hunger and satiety cues very well and are just trying to eat all the food on their plate.' To quantify this, Lindsay has investigated the discrepancies in calorie intake between Japan and the UK. She found that the average Japanese adult eats around 1,900 calories per day, whilst 'some studies have estimated that the average calorie intake for adults in the UK may be as high as 3,000 per day for men and 2,400 per day for women.' Meanwhile, the NHS recommends a daily intake of 2,500 calories for men and 2,000 per day for women - much more than the average Japanese adult. Serving smaller portion sizes, coupled with the philosophy of 'hara hachi bu' means that Japanese people are more in tune with their hunger cues and tend to eat less calories a day as a result.
