Wealth means different to different people. To some, it is living it up – fancy cars, McMansions, exotic vacations – all that defines a consumerist ideal.
And then there are the minimalists and there is a spectrum amongst them. The hard core ones are the planet-first kind who do everything they can to conserve and preserve. Think living off the land and off-grid.
And then there are the pseudo-minimalists who are the mindful consumerists. They do everything within reason to conserve and preserve but prefer not to take it to extremes even if they could afford to.
But wherever you are on that minimalist spectrum, that conservation and preservation mindset by default leads to wealth accumulation.
But ask any 6th-grader who between the two – the uber-consumerist or the minimalist – they think is wealthy and by default, they’d pick the uber-consumerist.
That’s how we are wired. What shows is what counts.
But it’s the minimalist likely swimming in cash while the uber-consumerist is one paycheck away from disaster. That’s the classic rich vs. wealthy debate. People who look rich might not be wealthy and people who appear run-of-the-mill own real wealth.
And you’d think the rich and the wealthy are the same and though there are similarities, there are big differences.
Rich is a state which is more current or transitory. Lottery winners, newly discovered celebrities, star athletes, folks working in high-paying professions such as medicine and law are the rich. They have quite a bit of money flowing in with most of it derived from a single source.
And the rate of outflow sometimes equals or exceeds the rate of inflow. The rich as a state can happen instantly and then it disappears.
Wealth on the other hand is more permanent. It comes through ownership of income-producing assets – enough assets that allows for a life full of choices.
And the income that these assets produce grows with time to a point where it surpasses income needed to support one’s daily existence.
So whether you work or not or if the skills you possess are in demand or not, your standard of living remains unaltered. If the same thing were to happen to a merely rich person, he would quickly become poor.
Wealth buys freedom. Enough wealth that the income it throws surpasses the income you need to live comfortably. Enough wealth that you can stop doing anything remotely resembling work and instead do something that you always wanted to do but couldn’t. You want to work for a non-profit that hardly pays anything, you have the freedom to do that. That business you always had an itch to start, you can do that. Or if all you wanted is to sit back and retire, you can do that too. All of that without impacting your quality of life. That’s critical mass.
And the only path that I know of that is guaranteed to get you there is a slow-boring one because it’s the most tried and true one. There is a reason why we come across many “get rich quick” schemes but never any “get wealthy quick” ones.
Yet behaviorally, the slow-boring path is the hardest to adhere to.
Charles Kinderberger, economic historian and an author of many investment classics, once said that there is nothing so disturbing to one’s well-being and judgment as to see a friend get rich.
And there will always be folks getting richer than you on some of the dumbest things you could have ‘invested’ your money in. Don’t let that take you off the rails away from a well-crafted plan.
And sure, you can strike it rich a million ways but holding on to wealth without a process, without a plan is tough. Because there are a million ways to lose it all.
I am not saying you have to hoard wealth to a point that you forget to live in the now and defer everything to that proverbial future. Because as they say, you can’t go snow-boarding in your nineties.
All I am saying is that there must be a balance between consumption now versus consumption later. That’s consumption smoothing where we tweak and optimize our spending to design a life that has a base level of happiness with occasional spurts of exoticism blended in. Because of course, YOLO.
And forget worrying about what we’ll leave behind for our heirs to inherit. That’s going to be dissipated anyways. I mean we can try but it’s going to be tough because of the human condition and hence the saying ‘shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations’.
And it makes so much sense. Say you are in the minimalist camp, your kids will absorb all those experiences and maybe implement some or most of them into their own lives. But then that minimalist mindset automatically means wealth accumulation which then gets passed down to your kids. Or at least that’s what most people do.
But then your kids someday have their own kids and now the setup is completely different. Their kids never get to see the struggle. They never experience frugality and choices being made. Life is easy. There is no drive and hence slowly but surely, wealth gets frittered away and the cycle repeats.
So is it any wonder that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation and a stunning 90% by the third1.
Of course that does not mean you don’t try but many a times, it would be an exercise in futility and it’s good to have that perspective.
So coming back to you, the timeframe to reach critical mass is different for different people. And it’ll come down to two things – your burn rate and your investment returns. Investment returns beyond what’s statistically likely based on the risk-return characteristic of your portfolio are not in your control and neither should you base your financial plan on.
Burn rate is in your control and of course the lower the burn, the sooner you’ll reach critical mass. And one big side benefit of a lower burn rate is that now you are used to living on way less than you could since you’ve designed your life around that. I mean you were able to get to that base level of life satisfaction that your burn buys. And that should be the goal.
So increase the earn, reduce the burn and take the difference and deploy it into a plan that is tailored for you. Do that for some time and critical mass would be within reach far sooner than you realize.
That’s all I have to say. Thank you for reading.
Cover image credit – Joel Santos, Pexels
1 Chris Taylor. “70% of Rich Families Lose Their Wealth by the Second Generation”, Reuters. June 17, 2015.