Six Types of Wealth: Being rich isn't just a money thing | Hacker News Reader

Six Types of Wealth: Being rich isn't just a money thing

youngmoney.co

41 pointspaulpauper24 comments

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To summarize the article, the six types of wealth (according to the article) are:

1. Money

2. Knowledge

3. Time

4. Health

5. Relationships

6. Experiences

Damn, I'm broke in 5 more ways than I thought.

Guess money is still the top then, you can buy knowledge (either hiring SME or giving you access to top tier universities/research institutes), you can buy time (someone doing your everyday tasks), you can buy health (preventive care and proper health care whenever needed), relationships (either personal or professional), and experience since you can afford trying and loosing money in the process of your experience journey.

"You can't buy happiness. You rent it for a while, though."

The problem I've seen in people who are strongly money-oriented is that they tend to sacrifice every other aspect of wealth in favor of getting money. They tell themselves what you've just stated -- but in reality, money alone doesn't get you most of those things. They also require time and attention, which is being spent on getting more money rather than the other items.

So, in the end, they tend to be monetarily wealthy but poor in many of the other areas.

Visiting public libraries since I was a child has contributed to my wealth of knowledge, experiences (through exposure to what's possible, and promoting imagination), relationships (by reading examples of how people get along well, both in fiction and nonfiction), and health (in this case a subset of knowledge, put into practice. Michael Pollan's advice "Eat food [not ultra-processed "food"], not a lot [I change this now to "not too much at once or overall"], mostly [a variety of] plants" has risen to the top.

Through relationships I have access to enough money (spouse works, I take care of our child who has disabilities, and I do some part-time work found through getting to know community members), and I have reclaimed more of my time, for activities with lasting good effects, by quitting videogames- I feel far more fulfilled after reading a book or gardening food than I have playing videogames, with a few memorable exceptions involving teamwork.

"Some people are so poor all they have is money."

"Some people are so poor all they have is nothing."

One day there was a hurricane where I lost everything I worked for for 20 years.

I was 45 so it set me back to when I was only 25, actually when you think about it opportunities were great back then.

Putting it in perspective for instance others who were devastated and truly lost everything completely, but had only built their resources over a period of 10 years, well I lost twice what they did, and it would take twice as long to recover no matter what.

I'm lucky I still had my truck which I had been able to park up on some higher pavement, the water line had actually gotten above the floorboard but the door seals kept it out.

Ever since there have been hundreds of desperate souls scattered at busy intersections across the city asking for change to aid in their survival activities, like never before.

And it looks like the need has never let up, I would be driving around, and stop at a light where somebody who had absolutely nothing would be in need of some generous help.

Doing the math it worked out that, if I worked 12 hours a day 7 days a week for the next two years, then I would finally have nothing myself.

The only non-renewable resource is time. My own time. I am reminded of this every time my manager threatens me with some arbitrary deadline.

Mood. I've been fighting this Powershell script for hours now.

"Cannot bind argument to parameter 'Path' because its null"

I'm ready to give it an argument. An argument involving a hammer.

edit: ah, my foreach counter logic is flawwed. It's incrementing one extra and spewing out an empty array element.

chatgpt is your friend;) feed your script into it.

The most important thing to me is time. I'd rather be poor and have time to do what I like than be rich and working all the time.

The thing is, you can literally buy time. Pay for someone to clean your house. Pay for someone to clean your meals. Pay for someone to do your tax. And eventually, if you have enough money, working at all becomes entirely optional. If you have 10 million dollars, you don't _have_ to ever work again to live a good life. You can choose to work more, either because you enjoy your work or because you want your life to be lavish instead of merely comfortable, but that's purely a choice.

Yes to some extent money is exchangeable for time (also if you consider options for maintaining health. Or safety).

But lifetime is finite, and you can't buy more of it no matter how rich you are. And even the super-rich can get hit by a bus.

Article:

"The biggest problem with pursuing monetary wealth over everything else is the opportunity cost associated with it. How many hours will it take to scale your income from $250k to $500k? $1M? $10M? Will any amount of money ever be enough? What other forms of wealth will you have to sacrifice to get there?"

The opportunity cost is NOT those of the person pursuing money. It's the opportunity cost of all those others having less because a few rich people took it all.

Not getting a decent education because one's parents were poor. Missing out on social events because that costs money one doesn't have. Damaging health because doctors bill would be too high. Contributing less to society due to above & related factors.

Multiplied by the # of poor people. That is the cost to society caused by wealth inequality / allowing to have super-rich people at all.

Some wealth inequality is okay. Too much, and basically everyone is worse off.

I regard money as lubrication oil: when you have none, machinery grinds to a halt. With just a little, you can get things running. With a bit more, things run smoothly. Adding tons more, doesn't help much.

What point is there to have a few people whose machinery runs super-smooth, when that causes everybody else's machinery to grind to a halt?

I never understand when people preach about wealth inequality. The GDP per capita of the world is about $12k. In a perfectly equal world, that would mean everyone makes about that in a year. Seeing people on social media whining about wealth inequality while living in some of the most prosperous countries in the world is kindoff laughable.

Perfect income equality (which isn't going to happen anyway, nothing near it) would have cataclysmic consequences for economies. We can't talk about $12,000 or whatever per person as if that means something.

Getting traction on this problem at the scope of the entire world would indeed be a huge lift. It's a shame that it's impossible to narrow the scope to something more realistic. As everyone knows, prosperous countries doing work to more equitably share that prosperity among its citizens is... a sin?

If you pay them enough, eventually your house cleaner, kitchen help, and tax filer won't have to work as hard as you.

>And eventually, if you have enough money, working at all becomes entirely optional.

Also eventually, if your expenses are low enough, working at all becomes entirely optional.

It would seem to be possible for these approaches to meet in the middle somewhere depending on the individual.

In terms of time one of the most lavish luxuries is to have the time to clean your own dwelling, make your own meals and low-tech stuff like that without having to be bound to only high-tech and/or high-earning action so strongly all the time.

True, but I meant for the typical person who has to work 9-5 to get their money. Like people who work 9-5 for tech companies...doesn't seem worth it to me.

Money is crystallized time.

I think from European perspective not being poor and having time is best scenario. Not being poor does not mean rich though.

In terms of happiness and life satisfaction, it's really clear that there's a sweet spot in terms of monetary wealth. Below a certain amount, happiness and satisfaction go down. But the same also happens above a certain amount, too.

So much this.

cf. Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of social, cultural and economic capital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu

Money is the only thing that actually matters.

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