30 Min Walks Can Save $2,500 a Year for You

For people still struggling to make time for exercise, a new study offers a strong incentive: you’ll save $2,500, or Rs 1,66,000 a year. The savings, a result of reduced medical costs, don’t require much effort to accrue – just 30 minutes of walking five days a week is enough. The findings come from an analysis of 26,239 men and women. Researchers decided to see if they could determine what being active or inactive costs each of us annually in healthcare spend.

A study put the costs of inactivity to the world economy at almost $68 billion annually.

For the new study, researchers stratified people into two broad groups: those who did or did not meet national exercise guidelines, which recommend that someone work out moderately for 30 minutes five times a week. It turned out that, on average, someone who met the exercise guidelines paid $2,500 less in annual healthcare expenses related to heart disease than someone who did not meet the norms.