Exercise and diet are keys to avoiding high blood pressure

Stop smoking. Not buying cigarettes alone can add up to more than $100,000 if you stop at age 40 and invest the difference conservatively until age 65. If you avoid emphysema and cancer, your savings multiply. The potential savings from medical treatments could add tens of thousands of dollars more to your nest egg.

Get moving. Exercise and diet are keys to avoiding high blood pressure and heart disease, which together have annual costs to the individual of $606, according to Nationwide's analysis. Investing that sum for 25 years may provide more than $35,000.

Such savings are not guaranteed. Even healthy people get sick, and living healthily usually means living longer, which layers on costs for other health woes you may encounter as you age. Still, the most important steps to retirement security may have more to do with what you give up (fatty foods, cigarettes and more than two alcoholic drinks a day) than with what you sock away. This is one situation in which less means much more.