The Many Different Kinds of Wealth

By Adam Safdi, WCI Columnist

You can occasionally stumble across something very inspiring on social media. Victoria Repa, the CEO and founder of BetterMe, recently wrote this on X:

“There are 4 types of wealth:

• Financial wealth — money
• Social wealth — status
• Time wealth — freedom
• Physical wealth — health

Be cautious of jobs that offer you 1 and 2 but rob you of 3 and 4.”

I thought I would examine this idea through the lens of The White Coat Investor.

Financial Wealth and Money

As medical professionals, we usually assume massive debt to chase a dream of becoming a doctor (unless you’re one of the 22.7% of survey responders who go through medical school without debt). We take that financial risk because we hope for better financial returns in the future. Then, with financial education, discipline, and patience, we aim to achieve a nest egg—a pot of money that will sustain us for the rest of our working or non-working lives.

Having money can make you happier to a certain extent, and it certainly makes life easier. Sure, some folks get through life with very little money to their name, but having a nest egg gives you a “cushion” of sorts. For example, if you’re hungry, you can buy food with money. If you’re stranded, you can buy shelter with money. And so on and so on in the physiologic level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (OK, you can’t buy sleep, but you can buy a nice mattress!) Having more money on hand means you can spend some of your money and lose some things and still be OK.

More information here:

The 2 Keys to Happiness

Will More Money Make Me Happier?

Social Wealth and Status

The tweet claims that social wealth is status. In a sense, the claim is that as you gain more and more social connections and influence, you have status. I think “status” is a weird word, because social wealth doesn’t necessarily give you influence or popularity. Rather, social wealth could be considered having your own rich network of social connections and/or social circle. We know from dementia research that maintaining social connections with others is paramount to preserving cognitive health and mitigating cognitive decline.

Regardless of whether your social wealth/status is on a large scale or a small scale, it’s good to have abundant connections. Just like we tend not to invest in a single company or business, we should aim to build a portfolio of more than just your spouse or one friend. A friend could relocate. Relationships can crumble. And we all die at some point. Having more friends means you can lose one or two for various reasons and enjoy the connections you still have.

Time Wealth and Freedom

Let’s move to time next. The tweet claims that time wealth is freedom. Many who read this blog are familiar with the notion that work can be thought of as exchanging our time for money. When we build our nest egg for retirement, we no longer have to spend our time earning money, but we can spend our money enjoying our time free from work—our freedom.

I have a friend who retired from one job only to join the board of directors of several organizations. Luckily, she enjoys the director work, and now that she's retired from her first job, she has the freedom to choose the tasks that fill her time and bring her enjoyment. Basically, her financial wealth allowed her to build a time wealth.

As it is wise to build money slowly throughout our careers and to build social connections throughout our lives, it’s also wise to slowly build freedom activities. Try out different hobbies and develop your portfolio of leisure activities. Maybe you like a certain type of exercise or reading or arts and crafts. (Bonus if your activity to fill your free time also includes new social connections!) Or maybe, like my friend, you spend some time during your first career volunteering for an organization for so many years that when you retire from your first job, you can be more involved in that volunteer activity. If you work a job for 12-16 hours a day and barely have time to develop a life outside of work, how will you know what activities to engage in when you are free from work?

It’s good to build a wide portfolio of leisure activities because, as we age, our physical and mental health might decline. If you lose the ability to engage in one leisure activity, you can fall back on an alternate activity and still enjoy your freedom.

More information here:

It’s a Lifestyle, Not a Vacation

How to Add Adventure to Your Life

Physical Wealth and Health 

Building and maintaining physical wealth should be a goal in our lives. How many of us have heard stories of a friend or loved one who had worked hard to enjoy a nice retirement and then developed a devastating illness, such as a stroke or cancer, that limited their lives? The physicians in the audience know that we can’t prevent everything, but good health and behavior choices can prevent plenty. We dream of enjoying an active retirement, and small, consistent steps—such as not smoking, staying active, and enjoying fiber-rich foods—can make that dream a reality. Besides wanting to prevent disease, we also want to physically do the things we dream of doing in retirement.

When I went on an Alaskan cruise, I could enjoy the hike-on-an-Alaskan-glacier excursion—not just because I’m young but because I could walk to and ride in the helicopter and I could physically complete the hike across the glacier in heavy gear. It’s also important to build our physical strength so that we can recover more easily from injuries or accidents.

Many of us dream of a long lifespan—and a long healthspan. The only way to ensure health in our latest years of life is to cultivate health all along. Build your portfolio of health by doing different physical activities. If you want to carry your own grocery bags, practice carrying 15- or 20-pound dumbbells for 10 minutes while walking around. Do you want to cultivate a garden? Practice those squats so that you don’t fall when digging in the ground. If you have a large portfolio of physical things you can do, your body might fail you in one way, but you can still be OK to do a different activity. (To watch some videos on exercises that can help preserve functional movement throughout life, check out these Outlive videos.)

More information here:

Functional Longevity: What Use Is Retirement If You Can’t Move and Think?

Don’t Push Your Luck (Physically or Financially)

One More Kind of Wealth

I’d like to propose a fifth kind of wealth: mental wealth. I believe mental wealth is resilience. I remember doing my pediatrics rotation in medical school and becoming overwhelmed with sadness when a child became gravely ill and was transferred from the general floor to the ICU. My supervising residents tried to reassure me. They said, “Don’t worry, children are resilient. They can bounce back from this.” Sure enough, the child recovered and came back to our regular ward in a few days.

We will likely all encounter stress at times in our lives. How well we deal with stress is a marker of our resilience. When considering resilience near the end of life, I can’t help but think of a relative with dementia. I’ll be driving with him in the passenger seat, and if the driver in front of us slams on their brakes, it’ll send my relative into a tailspin. Even though I brake in time to avoid an accident, he will yell, “Come on, don’t you know how to drive? People these days . . . gosh, do they just let anyone on the road?” He will spend the next hour ruminating on this one minimally bad experience rather than being able to let it go. This is a dramatic example, but I believe anyone could fall into a mental tailspin if we don’t build our resilience.

Accumulating a portfolio of resilience can be difficult, but it can be done by putting yourself in challenging situations—or situations where you know you might fail. It might be goofy, but I was told by a health coach that FAIL can be an acronym for First Attempt In Learning. When I strained my hip in 2022 and couldn’t run a race I had signed up for, I thought back to this health coach. I failed, but I wanted to do better and learn from my injury. I signed up for PT, did my exercises, and changed my workout regimen to help prevent further injury in the future. Now, as I write this, I’m training for a marathon in Las Vegas that I'll run in April 2025. When you fail at a task, you can ruminate on the failure, or you can choose to forget the negative feelings associated with the experience and embrace the opportunity to grow from it.

Volunteering can also build resilience in various ways—building connections, developing a growth mindset, gaining new skills, practicing gratitude, and boosting self-confidence. Try to participate in activities that build your resistance, such as group exercise classes that push your limits or volunteering (bonus if the activity also builds your social wealth and/or physical wealth!). We have all faced challenges that test our resilience, and how we approach these moments affects not just our mental well-being but also our outlook on life. If you grow your resilience throughout your life, if you're hit by something that could cause you stress, you are more likely to be OK.

The last part of Repa's tweet warns us to be cautious of jobs that promise money and status but rob you of freedom and health. I admire the solo practitioners out there or the doctors who might be the only specialty in their location. Please negotiate your contract or arrange your schedule so that you don’t neglect your health or freedom. This warning applies to other combinations as well. You could be a celebrity personal trainer and spend so much of your time in the gym and promoting your image (health and status) that you neglect your finances or your own leisure (money and freedom). You could be a freelance finance writer living in a van spending all your time writing (focusing on money and freedom) but forgetting to develop friendships or exercise (neglecting social connection and health).

In pursuing professional success, it’s worth pausing to reflect: is this path giving me the balance I want in all areas of my life? At the end of life, many folks regret working too hard or losing touch with their friends. We should aim to balance our medical practice so that we can practice balance in our lives.

What do you think? Do you have a plan to build these different kinds of wealth? How can you balance it? Is it even possible to achieve all five kinds of wealth?

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