Excerpted from 55 and Out, Chapter 2: Time Is the Asset
What Wealth Actually Means
· 3 min read
My father retired at sixty-seven, his body worn out from forty-one years in pest control. His freedom, when it finally arrived, came in a body that could no longer fully use it. The travel he had postponed never happened; Ecuador remained a plan. He had followed the script perfectly: work hard, stay loyal, save what you can, and retire when told. But the ending, instead of feeling like a reward, felt like waking up in a foreign country without a map.
This experience highlighted a fundamental misunderstanding of what wealth truly means. In common usage, wealth is often equated with money—net worth, the number on a financial statement. This definition is too narrow and dangerously incomplete. Money is a tool, a means to an end, not the end itself. The real purpose of that tool is to build a life of freedom.
There is another, more important definition of wealth: the freedom to choose how you spend your days. Not sometime in the distant future, not after reaching an arbitrary financial goal, but now, in your current life. A person with this freedom is wealthy in the deepest sense, irrespective of their net worth. Conversely, a person who lacks this freedom, no matter how substantial their bank accounts, is not truly wealthy.
Money can certainly buy freedom, yet it doesn't automatically confer it. Many individuals with high net worth live lives of quiet constraint, endlessly trading their time for more money they don't need, simply because they never learned to convert money into freedom. Meanwhile, others with modest net worth live remarkably free lives because they understood early that freedom was the ultimate goal, and they structured their lives accordingly. When we consider retiring before the traditional age, we are not primarily focused on accumulating more money faster. We are seeking to understand what money is for—what its real utility is in crafting a life aligned with our deepest desires.
Freedom of choice means having the ability to decide, daily, how you will spend your time. Most of us begin our careers trading time for money out of necessity; this is how young people without capital start. The critical question isn't whether you begin without freedom, but whether you perceive that condition as permanent or temporary. Someone who views it as permanent makes decisions that cement their dependence—a lavish lifestyle requiring every paycheck. The person who sees it as temporary makes different choices: a simpler existence that provides room to breathe, allowing them to build towards freedom rather than a more elaborate prison.
The script we inherited often asks us to bet everything on being the exception, imagining our bodies will remain unchanged to enjoy accumulated wealth. But as we age, our bodies depreciate, accumulating limits rather than compounding. The knee aches, energy flags, and recovery takes longer. Money can be re-earned; years spent waiting cannot be recovered. Health, once deteriorated, does not simply return because a retirement account reaches a certain number. The cost of waiting is not merely physical; it is psychological and emotional. Decades spent deferring life, constantly telling oneself that fulfillment is in the future, become a habit. When freedom finally arrives, the habit of postponement can remain, leaving one unsure of what to do with the time and money they now possess. As one author noted:
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
Wealth, then, is not merely having money; it is having the agency to shape your own days.
True wealth is the ability to choose how you live, not merely how much you have.