When we talk about credit, we are often referring to financial health. Fair or not, your credit history is considered a very real peek at your financial health. If you have poor credit, you are assumed to also have poor financial health.
But what if your credit history provided more than just a look at your financial health? What if your credit was also an indicator of your physical health? According to a recent article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it appears that cardiovascular risk can, to some degree, be predicted by looking at credit history.
Attitudes and actions that lead to poor health — and credit
One of the reasons that there appears to be a correlation between poor credit and poor health has to do with the attitudes and actions that lead to these issues. According to the study, which used data from more than 1,000 people followed over the course of 40 years, self-control, cognitive ability, and educational attainment are factors that influence both cardiovascular health and credit history.
The bottom line? If you practice poor impulse control, and if you engage in habits that are likely to damage your health, or even just avoid actions that are good for your health, there is a pretty good chance that you aren’t very observant of good foundational behaviors in your financial life, either. And that can lead to credit problems.
According to the study, the human capital factors that predicted both credit scores and risk for cardiovascular disease accounted for about 45 percent of the correlation between credit scores and cardiovascular risk. While it’s not exactly a huge endorsement of the link between health and credit, it’s still a pretty big deal. It indicates that your health habits and your money habits are probably more connected than you thought.
