Ep. 164 Four types of wealth

4-types-of-wealth-blog

In this week’s podcast, Anna explores the four types of wealth.

Just like success is more than fame and fortune, wealth is more than just money. The author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, suggests that there are 4 types of wealth: financial wealth (money), social wealth (status), time wealth (freedom), and physical wealth (health). Are there more?

 

*Resources mentioned during the episode*

1:1 coaching and mentoring: If you’re looking for support in getting that all-important clarity on what it is that you want from the next stage of your career, let me help you do just that in an individual coaching programme. www.onestepoutside.com/coaching

4 types of wealth

Transcript:

Hello there, and welcome to our second episode of 2022. We are settling in now to the new year. I hope you are, well, either actually having still some time off by all means. I’m very happy for you. And if not, then if you’re beginning to listen and get back into work, as I have, then I hope you are beginning to get back into the momentum of the year and getting into the swing of things and really implementing the strategies and starting to work towards those goals that you’ve set yourself.

Now, we are continuing on talking about reimagining success, coming up with your definition of success. And as we talk about different kinds of success, I came across, as we do, I guess not a meme, but one of these piffy little graphics on Instagram. Yes, I’m getting inspired by Instagram now. Social media is always a good source. Well, sometimes a good source of inspiration. And it wasn’t the different kinds of success, but rather the different kinds of wealth. And I’ve seen this all over the place since then. I’ve Googled my way to, I think, the original source, which is James Clear, who’s the author of Atomic Habits, best selling book and one that many would recommend.

He posted this back in 2018, I believe, on Twitter. That, I believe, is the original source. I do want to make sure I’m crediting where credit is due. So this is not from me. And to be honest, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily definitive either, but let’s see what you think. So when we talk about wealth, and in fact, funnily enough, one of the definitions of success might, or one of the important facets of that, might historically and conventionally be wealth, right? The American dream, being able to afford the big house, the car, the marriage, the et cetera, the holidays, and so on.

So wealth, of course, is financial wealth and money. And that means assets and income.

And I’m not an accountant or a financial advisor, and I’m certainly not going to get into that in detail now. But I would echo and reiterate, I guess, and absolutely emphasise all those verbs that, of course, financial wealth is important to a point. Now you get to decide, we all get to decide up to what point, but certainly up to a certain level. And there are studies that say, “Okay, $75,000. I believe it is up to that level. And we can become happier as we get more money. And then beyond that, actually there’s no correlation between happiness and financial wealth.” Then there are other methods and formulas of course, for thinking, “Okay, how much money do you need to earn in order to be able to retire comfortably, for example.” And of course it depends on where you live and the quality of life and your lifestyle and so on.

But all this to say that when we’re exploring different kinds of wealth and reimagining wealth, as much as we reimagine success in broader areas, I certainly don’t want to neglect the basic financial wealth. But of course, it’s more than just the cash for the sake of cash, right? It’s not the, I don’t know, stuffing notes down your mattress, or even having them in a bank account [inaudible 00:03:02] with inflation and so on. There’s definitely an element of financial literacy. Unfortunately, I don’t think, in fact, I know we don’t learn this kind of thing at school. Understanding money and understanding how to save, invest, how to have that balance [inaudible 00:03:15] and so on. So I leave it there because I’m not going to give any financial advice, but it’s definitely me something since I started my business in 2014, I guess, was when I started reading about ETFs and index funds and so on.

There are books I can recommend certainly. And again, in fact, pretty good resources on Instagram sources on Instagram and other social media. Not that you should ever take financial advice on most of them, we’ll put that as a little caveat. But certainly it’s important to learn more and it’s not as intimidating and scary as perhaps we imagine it to be. So as with everything, there’s a steep learning curve, but the more we read, the more we learn, the more empowered we’re going to be. So it’s really important not to put our heads in the sand, of course, especially when we’re working for ourselves starting and building a business. We need to be making sure that we are doing the right things with that money so that we’re growing the business, but also growing our wealth and saving for pensions and insurance and so on, whatever else.

I also saw another thing on Instagram. And apologies, Instagram is playing so heavily in this particular episode. But another one about all these famous, rich, celebrities who earned X hundred million dollars and now are worth much less than a million, just a few hundred thousand because they didn’t know what to do with the money. So it’s not just about how much you happen to have earned as a salary, but really how you then invest and what you do with it. So financial wealth, money, absolutely one of the different kinds of wealth. The second one interestingly is social wealth. And again, arguably, James talks about social wealth in terms of status. And so that’s really one of those traditional facets of success as well, right? The sort of surface prestige of the job title. Actually, the economic class as well. And perhaps now in modern times, it’s also that kind of influence of status, having however many hundred thousand followers, million followers, and having the yacht or at least posing in front of a yacht with Oprah Winfrey or Tony Robbins or whatever, all that stuff.

So there’s an element of status externally. More meaningfully, perhaps we talk about community and family and friends.

That sense, excuse me, I knocked over my water bottle almost there. That’s also an element of social wealth that’s more meaningful, I’d argue. And you may have heard that sentence, you are the average of the five people you spend your time with. And that’s an interesting one too, in terms of who are the people you’re spending your time with? And what are they focusing on? What’s important to them? But of course, especially in the tough times we’ve been going through the last couple years and there are always ups and downs in life personally and as a society, as a community, as a global community. Having those people around us, the loved ones, the support network, is so, so important for resilience, for happiness, and indeed for that social wealth.

So financial wealth, money, number one. Number two, social wealth, status, but more than status, really that community, belonging, connectedness, I guess is the word I’m after.

Now more differently, distinctively, and also more meaningfully I think are the next two. So time wealth. Time wealth, which is really freedom. This is how you spend your days, right? And unfortunately, more money, more financial wealth, can come at the expense of family, the social wealth, at the expense of the time wealth freedom, right? Because we’re earning more. We could do five jobs and that would cause a lot of stress and wouldn’t have any time for anything else in our lives. We’d had lots of money temporarily, but it wouldn’t be great for those other types of wealth. And that’s why it’s so important to broaden this definition to look at these other aspects of wealth, too.

And of course, Tim Ferris back in the day of the four hour work week kind of was one of the pioneers of this new approach to leveraging our time better. There’s now the FIRE movement, which you may have heard of. Financial independence retire early, FIRE, F-I-R-E. Financial independence retire early. And it’s all around avoiding the need for a regular job very briefly, no saving 25 times your expenses so that, effectively, you can retire early either to focus on your passions or at least not to have to have, again, that kind of job that makes you unhappy and ties you to the nine to five and so on. But rather, you can pursue your interest. You can travel. Probably, you’re still earning money and doing work, but just in a very different form.

And so time wealth might mean early retirement, it might mean more passive income streams. It might simply mean work life balance, more time for your hobbies and friends and family and fitness and so on. And then finally, speaking of fitness, there’s physical and arguably mental health as well, rather mental wealth. But that is, as I already said there, health. So of course, exercise, nutrition, working with a therapist, coach, and so on, right? I’ve talked about this many times, the different aspects of health. You might say mental, physical, also emotional, spiritual, perhaps. And that is also a type of wealth. I’m sure you’ve been there, whether it’s a cold or it’s something much more serious. In fact, even at the simplest level, and this is a bit pathetic I’ll grant you, but when I have even just a cold or a flu or, recently, COVID, you just feel completely mentally, physically drained. You realise you’ve been taking this thing for granted.

And if you don’t have that foundation, it’s so hard to do anything on top to work towards your financial wealth, to nurture your social wealth, and to have that time wealth. You just don’t have that freedom anymore because you’re so unwell. So we underestimate the importance of that physical, mental wealth that is our health and wellbeing, wellness, whatever you want to call it. And so that’s a really important dimension as well. And so again, I believe the original source was James Clear, the author of Atomic Habit. So we talk about different kinds of wealth. Financial wealth, money, social wealth, status or community, time wealth, freedom, and physical wealth, your health and so on. So what other kinds of health can you think of? I’d love to hear from you. If you want to contact me as I have a podcast at onestepoutside.com or you can tweet me, I’m not so active on Twitter in fact. But message me on Instagram or LinkedIn or Facebook or email me, whatever’s the best channel for you.

I’d really like to hear if you can think of other kinds of wealth that are really important. Have you been neglecting any of these streams? Maybe you’ve been really focusing. And I certainly do this with the pendulum swings for me, right? Maybe you’ve been focusing on the time wealth, which is something that we really love. And that’s incredible. We aspire to that. On the other hand, we’ve forgotten about kind of the basics of the financial wealth and the social wealth, or maybe we’ve been neglecting our physical wealth while we hustle, hustle, hustle, trying to work on the other aspects, right? So as with everything in life, it’s a bit of a rollercoaster. It’s a bit of kind of a spinning a plate over there, coming back to spin the plate over here, but it is important to keep an eye on those different plates so they don’t go crashing down to the floor, if I can extend that metaphor a little bit.

So understanding what have you been neglecting? What have you been focusing on? Where do you perhaps need to focus a bit more? And of course, this is very much a fit. I’ve only just discovered this, but it’s very much a fit and kind of a parallel complementary to my five Ls model, which I mentioned earlier. And in fact, if you do want to do that assessment, you can get that at onestepoutside.com/success, onestepoutside.com/success. And that’s 10 kind of questions to guide you in each of the five areas, the five Ls, as I call them, to see where you are focusing your time, where you are, and where you might want to focus a bit more going forwards. But again, I ask you, are there other areas, other dimensions, aspects of wealth that I haven’t considered that James Clear didn’t consider his four dimensions there? Anything else?

Any insights from that in terms of how we should be redefining wealth, redefining success, redefining what it means to have that status, to have the money, to have freedom even, to have that health, right? And always, it’s not just semantics. It’s really understanding the language that we’re using, the goals that we’re setting to make sure that we’re working towards meaningful targets. And of course, this is a sort of big, philosophical, theoretical discussion, but it’s not theoretical. It’s really rooted in actions, right? So if we take the financial wealth, it’s important, as I said at the beginning, to really try to empower ourselves with financial literacy, understanding investing, and so on with the time wealth. If we’re finding that we’re earning a load of money, but we’re over delivering for all our clients and we have no time, we need to obviously be raising our prices or working with a different kind of client.

Maybe we need to be productizing our services so we have more passive income. Diversifying our income streams, bringing on a team so we can focus on the really important strategic business development aspects and then elevate ourselves away from kind of the lower levels, admin and executing and so on. Physical wealth, of course, emotional, mental, whatever you want to call that, the health aspect as well. There are some really concrete, tangible actions you want to be taking if that’s something you’re not prioritising. So this is not just a theoretical, philosophical discussion here. These really are kind of rooted in real-life strategies and actions to take as we go forward. So I hope you found that interesting. If you haven’t come across that graphic, there you go. I’ve shared it with you now. Looking forward to your insights, and I encourage you to reflect on what wealth means to you if there are other aspects that we haven’t touched on today, and what that means in terms of your business, your career, and your life going forwards. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.

WORK WITH ANNA

Let us help you design a business and a life that gives you freedom from the 9 to 5. There are several options for how you can work with us. Choose the programme that’s right for you.

The Outsiders Business Incubator

A year-long business incubator for experienced corporate professionals who want to translate their skills and passions into a profitable and fulfilling business. onestepoutside.com/9to5

The Outsiders Business Accelerator

An ongoing mastermind for service-based business owners, freelancers and online entrepreneurs who are ready to achieve success on their own terms. onestepoutside.com/accelerate

The Outsiders Business Academy

A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5. onestepoutside.com/course

1:1 Coaching & Mentoring

If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching

Explore a broader definition of success

Download this free assessment to consider what ‘success’ means to you across different areas of your life, evaluate where you are today, and prioritise the right goals to get you to where you want to be.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

You might also like

“Everything you’ve ever
wanted is one step outside
your comfort zone.”

Book a free consultation

Get on the phone with Anna to discuss your unique goals and situation to determine the best programme for you, so you can start taking action towards creating the business and lifestyle you desire.

Explore a broader definition of success

Download this free assessment to consider what ‘success’ means to you across different areas of your life, evaluate where you are today, and prioritise the right goals to get you to where you want to be.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Explore a broader definition of success

Download this free assessment to consider what ‘success’ means to you across different areas of your life, evaluate where you are today, and prioritise the right goals to get you to where you want to be.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Outside of the 9 to 5

Anna continues the journey in her new book, where she details what’s needed to sustain your initial escape from the 9 to 5 in a guide to designing and building a profitable business that gives you more freedom, flexibility and fulfilment.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how One Step Outside uses and protects any information that you give One Step Outside when you use this website (https://onestepoutside.com/).

One Step Outside is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

One Step Outside may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

What information we collect and why

We only ever collect the information that we need in order to serve you.

Generally, this just means collecting your first name and email address that you enter, for example, when you request a resource, register for a webinar, or submit a message via a contact form.

If you are a paying customer, we also collect your billing information including your last name and your postal address.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact forms

We use Gravity Forms to allow you to contact us via the website. We will use the information you submit for the sole purpose of that specific form and will explicitly ask you to provide your consent to allow us to do so.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Advertising and Analytics

Google

We use Google Analytics to track and optimise performance on this site as well as embedding video content from YouTube, and this means that your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page that you’re visiting and your IP address. Google may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse and personalise content and ads that you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See their Privacy Policy to learn more about how they process data for each of these purposes, and their Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising and how long Google stores this information.

Facebook

We use the conversion tracking and custom audiences via the Facebook pixel on our website. This allows user behaviour to be tracked after they have been redirected to our website by clicking on a Facebook ad and enables us to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook ads. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, i.e. we do not see the personal data of individual users. However, this data is stored and processed by Facebook, who may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Usage Policy https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.

You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your computer for these purposes. You can revoke your permission directly on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. For more guidance on opting out you can also consult http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Who we share your data with

We use a number of third parties to provide us with services which are necessary to run our business or to assist us with running our business and who process your information for us on our behalf. These include a hosting and email provider (Siteground), mailing list provider (GetResponse), and a payment provider (Stripe).

Your information will be shared with these service providers only where necessary to enable us to run our business.

How long we maintain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

The main reason for collecting this information is to be able to send you resources, updates and, sometimes, information and products and services, as well as for internal record keeping.

The rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How we protect your data

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password that lets you access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and we ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. Initially created on 18th November 2016, it was last updated on 23rd May 2018 to be compliant with GDPR.

Contact information

If you have any questions or concerns related to your privacy, you can get in touch here >>