In these days of celebrating the Facebook billionaires and
debating about 1% wealthy and 99% not, I would like to propose an alternate
definition of who is wealthy and who is not. This definition is not based on a
quantitative measure of how much money you should have before you are considered
wealthy.
My definition is---you
are wealthy if money is not what is stopping you from doing or acquiring what
you really want.
The key word is what you really want. This is not you buying
or doing something to impress others. A simple test to figure out what you
really want is to respond to the question: What
would you purchase or do if you could not show it to others or talk about it?
If you don’t cheat in responding to this question, you may
find that money is not a barrier to
you living the life you want and hence, by definition, you are wealthy, even
though your bank balance may not reflect the level expected by the conventional
definition of being so.
Now, you may say, “what if I want to stop working, give a
lot more to charity, and leave behind a big inheritance. Don’t these actions
require a lot of money?”
Yes, but do you really want to?
If you don’t work, what will you do? We cannot survive without some form of
stimulus, and work generally provides a daily dose of it. Not having that is
frequently a curse than a boon.
Next, if the objective of charity is to create an impact, one does not need a lot of money
to achieve that. In fact, many folks who have created a big impact have done so
by a good idea not the shear volume
of money. Also, if what you want out of giving is to feel good, even a modest
contribution or non-monetary effort may allow you to do so.
Similarly, leaving behind a large inheritance is not
necessarily a good thing. I have seen nothing but problems when children expect
to inherit lot and when they actually do so. Besides, if you live your life by
the above definition, your children may follow you and are able to live a
“wealthy” life without needing much money.
So, why would they need a big inheritance?
So, rejoice. Money is
not stopping you from doing what you really want and so you are wealthy and do not even know it!
