What is Wealth?

What is Wealth?

With a post title like that I could get really esoteric, but today instead I’d like to concentrate on what Chip Conley would call an Emotional Equation.

Focus x Stoicism x Time x Diversification = Wealth

This comes courtesy of Professor Scott Galloway in his latest newsletter, called “The Algebra of Wealth”. In his well thought out piece, he gives a financially focussed definition of wealth (“Rich is having passive income greater than your burn”) to frame his thoughts. I am passionate about education in the area of personal finance, so do highly recommend reading this piece, Professor Galloway is similarly passionate about helping us all learn how to build wealth to create that financial independence, something that is actually quite simple to do over time once we demystify it.

Now, the formula above could readily be applied to many non-financial definitions of wealth. That is what brought me to share the article with you, more than anything.

Let me then take his four elements of that equation to muse on Wealth in a non-financial way.

Reframing Wealth, first of all, let’s start with Professor Galloway’s focus on building up sufficient passive income (over time) to meet our needs. As he outlines in the article, his father has retirement income of $48,000, yet as he only…