AS A PHYSICAL therapist, I’ve spent a large slice of each work day teaching and encouraging patients as they exercise their way to better health. Along with other elements of treatment, each patient pays for a custom exercise program tailored for their specific problem. These are folks looking for a way past the debilitating effects of injury or disease. Even so, many of them find it hard to follow my plea to “do your exercises”. If they struggle to follow the helpful recommendations of a health professional, what about the rest of us? Over the years, I’ve found that most of us have at least an inkling of the health benefits of exercise. Still, like my patients, we often fail to act on that knowledge. Why? Maybe we can find the answer in the list below. Here are five common barriers that I’ve heard keep people idle: 1. No time. I’m sure it’s true. Long commutes, lengthy work days and activity-packed weekends leave little chance to carve-out a few minutes for our physical health. Even in retirement, time can be siphoned-off by the endless list of errands, obligations and leisure pursuits that keep us running. 2. No knowledge. Strange environment. Strange vocabulary. Strange people who seem at ease and know more than us about everything. That’s the challenge facing the novice exerciser stepping into the gym for the first time. It can lead to fear–fear of embarrassment, fear of injury or just fear of feeling lost. 3. No support. Going against the social flow can be painful for the lone exerciser. Choosing to head into the gym, rather than out for pizza and beer with friends can be hard. Or, maybe our spouse thinks exercise time is selfish time. Like exercise, social connections are important for health as well. Ideally, we shouldn’t have to choose one over the other. 4. No money. Let’s face it, gym admission isn’t free, and a home equipment purchase can quickly run into thousands of dollars. That price is no sweat for a fitness aficionado with extra cash who’s hooked on the exercise habit, but what about the newbie? Few people want a gym membership or treadmill gathering dust, reminding them of the resolution they didn’t keep. 5. No energy or motivation. Hectic schedules leave many of us drained and dreaming of a quiet moment to just be still. Other folks find themselves stuck in a sedentary rut, never straying off the path that leads from one seat to the next. For those in either camp, any thought of pumping iron or pounding pavement holds no appeal. That’s my short, anecdotal list of hurdles hindering folks from launching into a new exercise routine. For an in-depth look at more barriers to physical activity for adults over age 70, check out this systematic review of the research literature. Meanwhile, our bodies are missing the movement that keeps them healthy. What to do? Here are five baby steps to help us past the roadblocks listed above: 1. Minutes matter. It’s easy to get hung up on the notion of needing a set routine of exercises performed within a solid block of time. That may be ideal, but it’s not necessary. We can try weaving convenient exercises into the actual fabric of our lives. By the end of our day, a few, short bouts of five to ten minutes each can add up to meaningful progress toward fitness. 2. Study time. The online world abounds with exercise advice. Experts promise results ranging from building a healthy heart to gaining the perfect glutes. The choices can be overwhelming. I recommend starting tiny. The simple routine I’ve included below can help nearly anyone take the first step. 3. New network. I’m not recommending we dump our motionless friends. Still, our moms warned us about spending too much time with the wrong crowd. Think about who in our circle is already doing a little exercise. Maybe they’d like a partner? Or, maybe there’s someone we could recruit with just a little nudge. 4. Frugal fitness. We don’t have to shell out bucks to a gym to get a workout. Any time we move our body against the force of gravity, we’re exercising. With a little thought, we can round up a robust routine of exercises to perform at home with little or no equipment. Read on to find a starter set of exercises for the true beginners among us. This list costs almost no money and just a little time. 5. Finding a cause. Stuck for a stimulus that rouses us to action? Remember, imagination is often stronger than willpower. Letting our thoughts dwell on the end game can often be helpful. Do we want to cut a fine figure? If so, we don’t have to get swimsuit-svelte to claim success. Even a little slimming and toning from exercise can give our normal clothes a nicer fit. How about feeling better? Researchers from Boston University and the University of Massachusetts found that even a low-intensity exercise program can help older adults improve both physical and psychological fitness. And their study doesn’t stand alone. Reams of other research support their findings, and highlight even more benefits from exercise. Still, on some days, the only force that will get us moving is old-fashioned discipline. It’s the same determination that moves most of us reading this to make better financial choices most of the time. No matter what our motivation, nearly all of us can kick off our trek to better health today with the following routine: 1. Wall push-ups. Stand facing a wall at fingertip distance. With arms held straight at shoulder height, place your palms on the wall a little more than shoulder-width apart. Bend your elbows until your nose almost touches the wall. Push back until your elbows are straight. Repeat until you’ve done 10-20 repetitions. When wall push-ups are too easy, progress to push-ups with your hands against a counter. These exercises strengthen the muscles of your chest, shoulders and arms. 2. Shoulder blade squeeze. Sit or stand and place palms together in front of your chest with elbows bent and pointing down toward your feet. Pull your arms apart while keeping your elbows down until you squeeze your shoulder blades together. Do 10-20 repetitions. To progress, add the resistance of an elastic exercise band. This exercise works the muscles of the upper back. 3. Sit to stand. This is a wonderful exercise for buttock and thigh muscles. To begin, sit at the edge of a firm seat. Lean forward from the hips, then stand up without using hands, if possible. Sit down and repeat for 10 or more repetitions. You should stay balanced, with feet in full contact with the floor, during the entire exercise. 4. Calf raises. Stand with your hands on a counter to maintain balance, Rise up on your toes for 20 repetitions to strengthen the muscles on the back of your lower legs. These muscles are important for walking and balance. 5. Easy crunch. Lie on your back on the floor or bed with your knees bent and feet flat on the supporting surface. Slowly curl your trunk forward as you try to touch your knees with your hands, then slowly return to the starting position. Do 10-20 repetitions to strengthen your abdominal muscles, one important part of your muscular “core”. The last five. This exercise requires a decent set of walking or running shoes. Begin by walking out the front door and up the street for five minutes at a brisk pace. Stop and retrace your steps for the return trip back home, for a total of ten minutes of heart-rejuvenating activity. Will this workout ready us to run a marathon or toned-up to star in the senior sports league? No. Could it be better? Probably. Still, nearly every muscle–including the heart–gets a little work. And it may just draw us into a habit that keeps our bodies sturdy enough to enjoy the years ahead. Ed Marsh is a physical therapist who lives and works in a small community near Atlanta. He likes to spend time with his church, with his family and in his garden thinking about retirement. His favorite question to ask a young person is, “Are you saving for retirement?” Check out Ed’s earlier articles.

LAST WEEK THE government released its monthly employment figures for February. The results weren’t great. Payrolls declined, and unemployment ticked up. These numbers square with other downbeat data, including a recent uptick in bankruptcy filings. Another worry: Oil prices have been rising, a result of the conflict in the Middle East. That’s a concern because it could lead to a reacceleration of inflation. It could also dampen consumer spending because higher gas prices act like a tax on consumers, leaving them with less to spend elsewhere. For these reasons, commentators have started to talk about the possibility of stagflation—a combination of stagnant growth and higher prices. But is that where things are headed? To answer that question, it's worth taking a closer look at two current economic trends. The first is what's been referred to as the K-shaped economy. To understand this idea, imagine a chart plotting the relative standing over time of those with higher incomes and those with lower incomes. Owing to a rising stock market, the shape of the chart for those with higher incomes extends up and to the right. Folks with lower incomes, on the other hand, haven't benefited as much from rising markets, and they've been more affected by higher inflation. So for this group, unfortunately, the shape of the chart is down and to the right. Put the charts together and they form a K. But how will the two legs ultimately affect the economy and the market? At first glance, this K-shaped divide would appear decidedly negative. That’s because lower-income consumers tend to spend a greater proportion of their incomes, so if they’re not doing as well, that can have more of an economic impact. That’s the most obvious conclusion we might draw about a K-shaped economy. But in that kind of economic situation, that likely wouldn’t be the end of the story. Downbeat consumer spending, especially in combination with higher unemployment, would likely lead the Federal Reserve to continue its current round of rate cuts. That, in turn, would help consumers by making everything from mortgages to auto loans to credit card payments less expensive. All things being equal, it would also help the investment markets, owing to the math behind stock valuations. The bottom line: This K-shaped dynamic doesn’t seem great, and probably isn’t great from a societal perspective, but the ultimate financial impact—and the timing of that impact—isn’t certain. The second big economic trend today is the boom in artificial intelligence. That includes the infrastructure build-out, which has been enormous, as well as its productivity impact for users, which is still to be determined. For now, all of the AI-related spending has been positive for the market and for the economy. But what will the ultimate impact be? On that question, there’s a lot more debate. According to one view, AI will meaningfully boost productivity, by giving everyone what amounts to a highly productive assistant, or team of assistants. But there’s no consensus on this. Others believe that AI will replace large numbers of workers and cause widespread unemployment. Which way will things go? This question is harder than it appears. Not only would we need to determine the net effect of AI. We’d also need to determine how those effects net out against all the other economic factors out there, including the K-shaped situation. To choose just one example, tighter immigration controls could lead to higher wages, which could lead to inflation and maybe pressure on corporate profits. The number of factors is almost innumerable. The bottom line: When markets wobble, the standard advice is to avoid overreacting. The reason for that is straightforward: because we can look back at history and see that we’ve managed to get through all past crises, and that the market has always recovered and gone higher. But there’s another reason to avoid reacting too strongly or worrying too much. Where things ultimately go in the economy will always depend on the complicated interplay among all of the factors out there, from AI to the K-shaped economy to the war in the Middle East, and everything else, including things we aren't even currently thinking about. Investors, in other words, should be careful to not focus too narrowly on any one news item because, at any given time, it’s always going to be just one of many factors, and it’s very difficult to know how those factors will all net out, and when.   Adam M. Grossman is the founder of Mayport, a fixed-fee wealth management firm. Sign up for Adam's Daily Ideas email, follow him on X @AdamMGrossman and check out his earlier articles.

I'VE RECENTLY MADE the most significant change to my own portfolio in thirty five years. For the first time I've moved away from pure market-cap investing, tilting meaningfully toward Europe and Southeast Asia and bringing my US technology concentration down to around fifteen percent. I'm retired. I don't need to chase the outperformance that concentration might deliver, and I don't need the potential volatility that comes with it. This is a personal position rather than any kind of recommendation; it's nothing more than a risk management decision made at a point in life where I simply don't need the risk. What prompted it was a growing discomfort with something I suspect many everyday investors haven't fully reckoned with: the S&P 500 is no longer quite the animal it once was. A broad market index fund casts a wide net across the economy, and the S&P 500, which tracks the 500 largest US businesses by market value, has long been held up as the sensible default: low cost, well diversified, a bet on the whole rather than any one part of it. A sector fund works differently; it makes a deliberate, concentrated bet on a specific industry. If you believe technology is going to outperform the market as a whole, it gives you the ability to concentrate your capital into exactly the sector your research or gut instinct suspects is going to be the place to be and let it run. The theory behind each is straightforward enough. A broad market fund captures a larger slice of the investment universe and is generally considered the lower-risk path. A sector fund comes with a well-understood trade-off: higher potential returns in good times, sharper drawdowns when sentiment turns. Investors who consciously choose a technology sector fund know what they're signing up for. The risk profile is understood, accepted, and priced into the decision. The problem is that the line between these two things has become a bit fuzzy, and most everyday investors haven't noticed. A handful of technology and technology-related companies (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet) have grown so dominant in their market valuations that they now represent a disproportionate share of the entire index. During the last year, the top ten holdings have accounted for roughly a third of the total weight of all 500 companies. The mechanism behind this is simply how the index works. The S&P 500 is market-cap weighted, meaning the bigger the company, the bigger its slice of the pie. As technology companies scaled their dominance through the 2010s and into the 2020s, their weight within the index ballooned accordingly. The index didn't change its rules; the market just rewarded one particular group of companies so heavily that they came to dominate the scoreboard. This means the investor who bought the S&P 500 believing they were spreading risk broadly across the American economy (energy, healthcare, financials, industrials, consumer staples) owns something that looks quite different to the story they were sold. You buy five hundred companies and a third of your money lands in ten stocks, most of them operating in the same broad technological ecosystem. That is a concentration risk, whether it is labelled as one or not. It's a sector fund “light”, acquired by stealth through the natural mechanics of market-cap weighting. The issue is that millions of everyday investors are carrying a version of that same risk without necessarily knowing it. Although I've used the S&P 500 as an example here, it isn't alone. Most broad-based indexes including developed world trackers will exhibit the same characteristics to varying degrees, because the same companies sit near the top of those indexes too. The MSCI World, often marketed as the global diversifier, allocates somewhere in the region of seventy percent to US equities, and within that, the familiar names reappear. You can cross borders on paper without ever really leaving the room. None of this is an argument against the S&P 500. The concentration reflects real, earned dominance; these companies grew to the top of the index because they genuinely deserved to. And whether my reallocation turns out to be the right call is genuinely unknowable. The concentrated index could continue to outperform for another decade and I'll have left returns on the table, a real possibility I've made my peace with. The point isn't that I've found the correct answer. The point is that I had the information to make a considered choice, weighed it against my own circumstances, and acted accordingly. That's all any investor can do. The uncomfortable truth is that a great many people haven't been given the chance to do the same. They're holding a product that has quietly changed its character, and nobody has thought to mention it. Better information doesn't guarantee better decisions, but it at least puts the decision where it belongs: with the person whose money it is. ___ Mark Crothers is a retired small business owner from the UK with a keen interest in personal finance and simple living. Married to his high school sweetheart, with daughters and grandchildren, he knows the importance of building a secure financial future. With an aversion to social media, he prefers to spend his time on his main passions: reading, scratch cooking, racket sports, and hiking.