Morgan Housel

And who I want to be is not who you want to be.

Everyone has their own very individualistic definition of that.

It's waking up and saying, I can do whatever I want today and having the independence and the freedom to do that.

And the distinction is there are billionaires who have no control over their time.

no control over their schedule, spend their entire day doing things that they don't want to do.

And there are people who make $50,000 a year who are living their absolute best life and totally control their life, control where they live, where they work, who they spend their time with, doing the hobbies that they want to do.

And so to me, that's really what wealth is.

And I think a lot of people can get this wrong in their ambitions, that if your sole financial ambition is I want the highest net worth,

And the way in which you're going to get that is to basically put on a performance of somebody that you're not and wake up every morning and do things that you don't enjoy doing.

And...

That's not to say hard work.

I think the vast majority of people get a big thrill and a lot of pleasure out of hard work.

They like being productive, doing the thing that they want to do.

It's working hard on things that you genuinely don't enjoy solely because you're attracted to a bigger bank account.

But then that's a very common thing.

So I think the definition of wealth is the ability, the pleasure of being who you want to be, being independent, waking up every morning and saying, what I'm going to do today is the thing that I want to do.

That's what it is for a lot of wealthy people.

This to me is one of the most fascinating things of meeting a lot of wealthy people.

If you associate wealth with material and you go, they have a big house, have a big car, maybe have a plane.

And you associate, oh, this person is very wealthy.