Wealth Building Wednesday: The 7 Kinds of Wealth

When many people think of wealth building, they envision building up stacks of money. Money is only one type of wealth. 

Moreover, I would argue it isn’t even the most valuable type of wealth. This post will explore each kind of wealth from the least valuable (7) to the most valuable (1) and I will explain why I believe it is so.

7. Money

Money’s sole purpose is for use as a tool in determining how much value a product or service will bring to a prospective buyer along with how much commitment the prospective buyer has to getting the result that the product or service can offer and how much trust the seller has earned in the eyes of the buyer that they can deliver the results promised.

Money can be lost, stolen, destroyed, or diminished at any time. Relying on money, therefore, for security is like using sand as a foundation for a home you are building.

This makes money the least valuable kind of wealth that can be built. You can’t eat money, you can’t drink money, you can’t warm yourself with money for very long. Money only becomes valuable when it is invested to acquire the more valuable kinds of wealth.

6. Possessions

Money can’t build you a shelter but it can buy you one. It can’t cook you food but it can buy you the tools needed such as a stove or an oven. These possessions are more valuable than money, therefore, and will do more to help with long-term survival.

However, like money, these things are vulnerable to changing conditions. They are outside of the individual’s control. They can be lost, stolen, destroyed, or diminished at any time. 

Without knowledge of how the possessions are made or of where and how to acquire them, once they are gone, the individual is left with nothing. That makes knowledge far more valuable than the possessions themselves.

5. Knowledge

Knowledge can be leveraged to gain its possessor many things, but how valuable the knowledge happens to be is dependent on several other factors.

First, how rare the knowledge is. If 97% of people know how to do the same thing that you do, the knowledge you possess isn’t going to be considered very valuable.

Second, how useful the knowledge is to the majority of people. The number of people who are skilled in the making of linotype is very small but it’s not a very valuable skill because the majority of people in today’s world have access to technology that produces superior results, making the skill unnecessary and not very useful. That, of course, could change if an apocalyptic event were to take place, but for the moment, that's how it is.

The third part of the value equation is how capable the person holding the knowledge is at applying it to real-world


problems. The internet provides veritably unlimited access to knowledge of all kinds, but without the wisdom of knowing how and when to apply that knowledge, it’s worth than useless. It can actually create a kind of mental paralysis where people don’t know how to sort through all that information to find what is worth keeping and what isn’t.

While knowledge, once gained, can’t be destroyed or stolen as long as the mind containing it is healthy, it can be diminished in value or lost due to a lack of use. Its main use is in gaining the next most valuable kind of wealth: wisdom.

4. Wisdom

Wisdom is powerful. It makes knowledge purposeful and will ensure that money and possessions are put to their best use. But by itself, it won’t create a life that is truly worth living. That’s what makes it above money, possessions, and knowledge, but only 4th on the list of value. Its best use is to apply it to gain the 3 most valuable kinds of wealth.

3. Health

Without good health, it is difficult and sometimes even impossible to enjoy any of the other kinds of wealth While someone who is ill is still capable of acquiring the 2 most valuable kinds of wealth out there, their ability to make use of it is limited. The better the health, the more of the two most valuable kinds of wealth it is possible for a person to acquire.

However, health isn’t the most valuable kind of wealth there is. Health can give you a long life, but it can’t give you a life worth living. It won’t fill the emptiness. Without the most valuable wealth there is, a long life with full health can become a living hell of wishing for a death that never seems to come.

2. Time

Time is the great equalizer among all human beings. It cannot be lost, stolen, destroyed, diminished, or devalued except by death. However, it can be wasted and misspent.

Nobody among us gets more than 24 hours in a day, and we all must determine how to spend the hours we’ve been given. The best use is to spend the time we have gaining the most valuable kind of wealth so that the hours we have will be hours filled with love, hope, and joy.

Love: The Most Valuable Kind of Wealth

Love is the single most valuable kind of wealth available to man. It can never be destroyed, not even by death. Time does not touch it and cannot stop it. Distance is no barrier to it, either. While it can be pushed away and it can be neglected, love can survive even these things and come back to life when it is least expected.

Abraham Maslow, a famous 20th Century Psychologist, supposed that love was something people would only seek out when they had all their other needs for food, water, shelter, and reproduction met. Harry Harlow, however, came along just a few decades later to prove that without love, it doesn’t matter how much food, water, shelter, or reproduction is available: the will to live will be gone.

If Maslow were correct, America would be the happiest place on the planet. We have more food, shelter, water, and reproduction available to anyone who wants it than any other nation on the planet. Yet that has not translated into a nation of happy, fulfilled people. What it has translated into is the most medicated nation on the planet.

Love makes life worth living. It brings with it hope and joy. Time without love stretches endlessly and seems pointless. Health without love is hell. Love can make even the shortest of times and the most painful of moments worth living.

Love will bring with it every other thing desired. Consider this: There are 7.5 billion people on the planet right now. No matter what it is you want or need, it’s almost a given that somewhere out there has it. If they know your love for them, and they love you in return, you won’t have to pay them money to get it. They will be happy to give it to you.

Sociologists have posited that we are all only 6 relationships away from meeting any person we need to meet in life, no matter how famous they may seem. The more time you’ve spent investing in loving the people around you and working for their benefit, the more likely it is that the person you need to meet in order to make your dreams come true is someone that is connected to someone you already know.

Project FED: Investing in Love with Our Time, Our Talent, and Our Treasure

Every day at Project FED, we invest in love. We invest our time, our talent, and our treasure in active love - a love that sees the needs of our neighbors and works to find resources that can be used to help them get their needs met. We provide this all at no cost and without seeking to gain for ourselves, merely to help others with what we do.

Our joy is in helping others succeed. Our hope is that by our example we may show people that there are better ways to do things and better ways to live. Our faith is that through our willingness to love others in the way that we do, we may become a spark that sets the world on fire for love.

Join Project FED

Take a little of your time, your talent, or your treasure and help us spread a little love by joining Project FED either as a volunteer, an affiliate marketer, or by purchasing ourgoods. It takes moments to sign up and minutes a day to support our efforts, but the investment you’re making in spreading love will come back to you in many astonishing ways.

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