so average person takes 20K breaths a day, that’s $1000/day every day for no effort.
Steps obviously vary a lot more. If you get the recommended minimum of 10K steps a day then that’s $2.5K/day.
I feel like were I given this sort of earning potential I would probably seek to get in shape as a first step, which would make the step choice the overall better choice.
But breathing is a prerequisite of living, so while you may not be able to walk every day you are alive (you become disabled or elderly) you will always breath. Over the course of a life, breathing is likely the better income.
The steps option has a way higher ceiling and can give you significantly more money when you need it most (i.e. early in this scenario). The breathing one will probably net you more money in the end, but that would likely be when you already have a huge excess and it doesn’t matter much.
If you walk 10k on avg a day from 30 to 70, you’d have to live until 130 to break even. It only gets worse if we consider steps walked since birth.
That’s before you consider that I’d rather have money while I can walk. Even looking purely at it from a most money at the end perspective I could invest the excess 1.5k a day and make far far more than you could breathing. I could also quite likely beat 10k steps on most days, when I go to a festival or other walking activity (which I would do a lot more with all the free time I’d have) I pretty often break 25k steps.
So the expected value is much higher for walking even factoring in the chance of a horrific accident.
Of course maybe you’d rather not feel obligated to walk every day, or maybe you’d rather play it safe with breathing. Those are both valid choices, 1k/day is still more money than anyone needs. But walking definitely makes you more money by the end, and personally I’d appreciate the incentive to stay active.
That’s a good point. Op doesn’t state how much air intake a breath takes. Say you breath in tiny amounts of air really fast. It would be much faster to ear that money.
But you should already be filthy rich at that point, so who cares 🤷♂️ the choice is largely irrelevant after a few years and, regardless of which option you choose, you should be well into the millions after a decade.
Steps let me build up actual wealth over the course of just a year or two. Breathing keeps me comfy my whole life, but I can’t be really wasteful for a few years.
Also should be noted, if you took that 1 mil and just put it in a bunch of high-interest savings accounts, you’d be averaging a little over $3k/month just in the interest earned.
It does make me wonder, at what point is the guaranteed $x a month a better call than one lump 1 mil?
You don’t need a degree in finance to do this calculation. You are simply looking for the present value of a stream of income.
It depends on what interest rate you think is “risk free”. Right now treasuries range from 5% to 3%. Just divide the yearly dividend (12 * 50) by that interest rate. $50 per month risk-free in perpetuity is worth $12,000 to $20,000.
The average human takes 20000 breaths per day. For comparison, the average American take 4700 steps a day so steps actually win since the break even point is around 4000 steps.
Good point, but when you run the numbers that works out to $1000/day for breathing and $1175/day for walking. With $1000 a day you won’t need to take those steps anymore. Bonus, as you gain weight you’ll presumably need to breathe more so you’ll gradually make more and more money right up until the heart attack. Truly a passive income at its finest.
$1175 for the average person NOT being paid to get more steps in. I would watch a 2 hour movie on the treadmill instead of going to an 8 hour work day. Not including any other steps it would average around $3370 dollars there. Or just listen to music, watch a TV show, whatever it was. I could do that 3-4 days a week, make more money and stay in shape.
Ok, so average respiration rate for adults over 18 during sleep peaks at 20 breaths per minute. That’s 1200 breaths per hour, and with a cushy 8 hours of sleep, that’s a whopping 9600 breaths while asleep, maximizing the average. That would net you $480 just for sleeping.
In comparison, on average at a 3 miles per hour pace, it takes 20 minutes to walk 2,252 steps. $480 would take 1,920 steps, and would take about 15.5 minutes to walk at the same pace.
So, 15 minutes of relaxed but purposeful walking would match the total amount you’d make on average for sleeping.
I average between 8 and 10k steps a day, so 2000-2500$ a day vs 36*24 ~= 864$
Someone pointed out you could loose your ability to walk in an accident or due to old age but you’d be breathing until the end, but at 3x the income you could easily invest and save to end up much wealthier than you would with the slower but more reliable breathing option
But regardless of which option you choose you’ll be set for life, but it’ll still probably take you hundreds of thousands of lifetimes to get even a fraction of Jeff Bezos wealth
I think I’d go for the steps just so I could build a nest egg faster and that generates passive income that way. 10000 steps in a day isn’t too tough (especially if you don’t need to work anymore) and that’s $2500 which is about triple the breathing amount for one day. Hell, I do over 20k steps some days. Even if I only get steps in on weekdays I’d still easily double the breathing income and getting more money earlier makes all the difference.
Plus I’d be getting paid super well just to stay somewhat active which is a win-win.
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