6 investments in your health

If you're looking for the biggest impact on your bottom line, nothing beats taking care of your number one asset - yourself.

Your spouse, your doctor, maybe even your kids have been nagging you for years to take better care of yourself. Now your personal-finance magazine is joining them.

As if adding years to your life wasn't incentive enough, preventive care is also a ridiculously astute investment. It can save you thousands of dollars in avoided medical costs and add literally hundreds of thousands to your lifetime earnings, if it keeps you from retiring early because of illness or disability (as nearly one in four workers do, according to the Fidelity Research Institute).

Talk about return on capital: Odds are, no part of the following six-step prescription will cost you more than pennies a day. So, uh, not to nag, but...

NEXT: Rx: Spot problems early