What is True Wealth? [Guide]

“Hurrah…!!! Never thought I would win a $1000000 lottery. Feels great to win and am ecstatic…”, was the reaction from a person, from lower strata of the first world society.

He became an overnight sensation in the Media. Many considered him lucky and his friends and family already treating him as a Wealthy man, who is filthy rich.

We might have heard many such stories before. Like the majority, I’ve been working for many years now but was never much interested to know fully, what role wealth plays in our daily life.

To be honest, I never attempted to understand what wealth truly constitutes and the importance of understanding it as a whole. And I am not alone in this.

Many of us still show some aversion towards financial aspects. Also, we view wealth only through the prism of personal material possessions.

Majority usually fail to show interest towards clearly understanding terms related to Personal Finance like Taxation, Savings, Assets & Liabilities, Securities, Balance sheet, and the math behind all these.

Partly our schools and upbringing are to be blamed for not having done many efforts in this direction and partly it is we ourselves responsible for not thinking enough, to get some acquaintance with the discipline. 

Almost it’s been a year, I was contemplating about wealth and have started reading from various sources like books, articles, videos, regarding wealth as a whole. I decided to start learning from basics, and the first question that came to me was, what is Wealth in general?

Wealth – The general perception

In The Man from Earth, 2007 American drama science fiction film, the protagonist was from Paleolithic age and survived for more than 14000 years. He keeps moving from one place to another and can be called justly “A Wanderer”.

Perhaps in his view, a stone, and an arrow might constitute wealth during his early years. But over a period with the evolution of tools and technologies, and with the changing human behavior, understanding of the term “wealth” also kept changing. Today his definition of wealth might be different from what he held as wealth centuries ago.

Even a couple of centuries back during colonial times, spices from Asia were a prized possession and were treated even worth more than gold elsewhere. In some of the agrarian societies, farms and cattle were treated as wealth and of course, many of today’s eastern communities still treat them that way.

The modern-day definition of Wealth, as per Oxford dictionary is defined as “a large amount of money, property or other valuable things”.  A wealthy person is the one who possesses these in abundance. The very term wealth is usually associated with materialistic possessions by many of us knowingly or unknowingly.

The term Net worth is the recent popular word that is being used to calculate how wealthy a person is. This term defines wealth in a bit broader fashion, as the inclusion of tangibles and intangibles, usually in units of securities(stocks or bonds), deposits, real estate property, farm, bank balances, metals(a gold…), etc.  

Wealth – The Real One

Wealth in general is a much broader term that includes both materialistic and non-materialistic things. And the definition of wealth keeps changing from person to person, and also with the changing times. For example, money is the greatest wealth for some, but when the same person after suffering from illness, might consider health as the greatest wealth.

Another person due to lack of understanding within family and relationships might feel all his/her possessions as nothing. Peace and happiness might be his gold and silver.

Many people say happiness is within and we need not search outside. But the majority don’t understand that for finding that happiness within, a peaceful environment is a prerequisite.

By environment here I mean, health, interpersonal relationships, personal finance, passions, and peace of mind. This atmosphere is a confluence of such various factors which together, in turn, provide an opportunity to discover happiness within us. Thus the real wealth can be defined as the below equation,

Real Wealth (Material Wealth + Peaceful Environment) -> Discover true happiness within us

But when living in a society we are intertwined with the survival questions, financial troubles, and relationship issues, which would crop up pulling “Peace” out of the equation. This is akin to hopping on Maslow’s Hierarchy step by step from basic needs to higher needs.

If looked at it only from a personal finance perspective then accumulating material possessions would’ve been a direct solution to our day to day problems. As it is not the case, we think happiness is far away. But if we look at this equation closely, Wealth viewed holistically(real wealth), is the hidden catalyst here.

When we work towards wealth after understanding its comprehensive nature i.e., by including under its definition, what all it takes to establish a peaceful environment around us, the journey towards inner happiness starts.

To emphasize it again, we must redefine wealth as something that is way more than materialistic possessions and that includes our health, relationships that we hold dear, our passions, peace of mind, human behavior, and various such other factors, in addition to the financial aspect of our lives.

Wealth – The Overall Truth

The lottery winning guy I mentioned at the beginning squandered the material reward, that he won. Without understanding the true value of it he is back to the earlier financial state, what he was before winning the lottery. The problem is, he failed to understand what true wealth is and the importance of looking at it in a holistic manner.

By now you might have understood that our conversation on what constitutes “wealth” has become broader.

From the perspective of personal Finance, towards human behavior later towards spirituality or peace and happiness to be precise. Understanding and looking at the term wealth in a holistic manner would help in creating a peaceful atmosphere.

Wealth is something when combined with inner happiness, brings out the true potential within us, to achieve excellence in any endeavor.

Thus the holistic view of Wealth is the catalyst in life’s alchemy, which creates a mocktail of various factors which together can be termed as the “true Wealth”.