That’s what Ray Kurzweil and Dr. Terry Grossman try to teach in Fantastic Voyage. While I was in Hawaii, I polished off 14 of the most dense chapters I could ever imagine. Since I’ve read about 3 books in the last 10 years or so, it’s a huge step for me. I tend to read short articles because I feel that I can get 80% of the information in 20% of the time.

It was quite amazing to read about all the ways Americans (well just about everyone) are slowly killing ourselves. Granted, while reading this book, I couldn’t help think that it was impossible for the average person to follow the guidelines. Nonetheless, Ray and Terry (as they tend to call themselves – see Ray and Terry), give a number of ways that people can alter their daily lives to enable them to be healthy. The idea is that by maintaining good health for the next 20 years or so, science’s progress will be able to step in and slow, stop, or even reverse aging. It sounds more than a little far-fetched, but they back up each recommendation with citations to the research that backs it up. I wasn’t about to check out all the references on vacation, but I’ll make the assumption that if their research was off, it would have been brought to light.

From a financial perspective, most of the recommendations are going to cost you. And since time is money, it’s going to cost you from that perspective as well. Then again, as Walter Updegrave shows, maintaining your health has quite a few financial rewards as well.