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Transcription
So one of the main key principles that we look at is this concept of wealth. So how do we define wealth? Well wealth is really we define that as a function of time, money and relationships. So it’s the intersection of those things. So what do we mean by time? So time we can think of in terms of the time we have. So not just our lifespan but also what’s sometimes referred to a health span. So the amount of time we have but also how healthy we are, how much we can get to kind of enjoy that. So like quality of time or quality of how you could use your time? So think of it as a quantum, how long you live for, okay, but also the quality of that time. So you might live to your 100, but if the last sort of 30 or 40 years of your life you’re basically sort of you know bed -bound and you know can’t really get out do anything, your quality of life is really low, then you would have a long lifespan but you wouldn’t have what we call a very high health span because the health part of that longevity, right? So we can think of time as the time we have on earth, if you like, or time alive, but not just the quantum of time, the quality of that time, all right? So because time is something that we spend, right? So the amount of wealth we have, a function of that is the amount of time that we have. So part of our wealth is the time we have available to us, not just the amount of that time, but the quality of that time. You got plenty of time, but there’s not much you can do with it you know, it’s like in hospital beds, I think. What do we mean by money? So we money, we see money as a proxy for resources, right? So it’s money we use as exchange for resources because most of the resources that we require, we can’t just exchange our effort for, right? Because we want them at a different time or a different type. So money, which is probably the most common or typical measure of wealth, and it’s an important part of it, but really we think about money a proxy for resources. And so the amount of money, wealth if you like, that we need isn’t a function specifically of the quantum of money. Because really it comes down to the resource. The quantum of money can matter because it allows us to access certain resources. But it’s the resources we acquire that matter. Because keeping in mind that wealth is a function of these things and that they’re interrelated. So time, money, relationships are all interrelated and trade-off between them? – Yeah, so how does, I think of money as access to resources. And say, for example, you’re retired, you don’t have much in terms of quantum of money, but you do have kids who are gonna either let you live with them or something like that. – So that’s still access to resources, right? So money is one way to access resources, okay? But don’t think of the concept of money, wealth as the amount of money. I have in the bank, it’s my access to resources. Now, one way to measure that is the quantum of money that I have, because I know I can exchange that. But also keep in mind that we have commercial exchange physically for money, and we have social exchange. We have friends, family, government. So think of money as a proxy for resources as opposed to a simple absolute. So there’s two components to that. One is the type of resources we require, okay, which is linked to the type of lifestyle we want to lead, right? So you can think of am I wealthy from a money perspective as compared to the lifestyle I want to live, do I have the resources capability to do so? Okay, either in I have the money to buy it all or I don’t have any money but I have access to it all. I own my own house, someone’s looking after me day to day, I’m on the government pension and that’s sufficient, whatever it may be, right? So again, what is my wealth like from a money perspective? It’s do I have access to the resources I require to live the way I live? And once I’ve hit a ratio of 100%, well, I’m as wealthy money-wise as I need to be. Does that make sense? Whether I’ve got millions of dollars of financial assets or next to nothing, you could argue Mother Teresa was extremely wealthy from a resource perspective because she had all the resources she needed to live, even though she might not have had much money in the bank, per se. Does that make sense? And obviously, trading time and money is one of the things that most people are very familiar with, because of that relative trade-off. We can dedicate our spending our time by deploying our human capital commercially, for example, to get more money. But then the trade-off of that is then that wealth of time, because we’ve got less time to do the things we like. And then the ultimate form, what we find to be– most people regard as the ultimate measure of wealth what we call relationships. And we can think of relationships in terms of what we mean by that is connection. How many people am I connected to and how deep are those connections? So you could think of that, formulaically you could think of that as friends to the power of intimacy. So the power of, you think of it exponentially because how intimate your relationships are is way more important than how many you have. So not friends multiplied, they’re not really proportionate. You can have a very small number of friends with very deep relationships, you can have great relationships, be really well connected, feel very wealthy in that sort of sense, if that makes sense, right? You can have a lot of friends, but if none of those relationships are very intimate, then you really don’t have, you know, what I call a lot of relationship wealth. Does that make sense? So that’s the interplay between those two. And most of the time, we spend our time and money developing those relationships, right? Or it’s the interplay between those. Does that make sense? And those relationships might be, you know, work orientated, They might be family orientated, they might be friend orientated, different and different sort of community, sort of social groups, etc. But it’s the strength and the value of those relationships that ultimately determine how wealthy people feel, especially when it comes to the totality, are they happy with their life? Right, because we know that being happy with life is all about how connected we are to those relationships. So, in summary, we see a measure of wealth as a function of that time, money, and relationship, and the quality and quantity of those we have compared to what we need in those things. But from a hierarchical perspective, relationships being the most important thing. In fact, generally speaking, I would say, we spend our time and money to develop our relationships. Does that make sense? – Yes. So you said that wealth is a function of time, money, and relationships. Do you have a way that those interact or is it just time plus money plus relationships? – Yeah, so that’s a great question. So think of it as the two of them feeding into the other. The reason we spend our time is to maximise our relationships. We either spend it by getting the resources so we can look after our family, but we also need to spend the time with the family, otherwise there isn’t a relationship. So you can think of how we spend our time and our money, both spending our time to generate the money, ’cause there’s a cost to the time, okay, but also the nature of the resources, ’cause money’s just a proxy for those resources, right? How we spend our time will be determined, or how we need to, to generate resources is gonna be a function of what resources do we need. If it’s a champagne caviar lifestyle, it’s very different to, you know, live an off-grid in the bush, you know, with one person sort of scenario, right? So the lifestyle always drives that, right? The lifestyle and the nature of the connections we like to have, the relationship we like to have. Are you the sort of person who doesn’t like to have very many friends, but likes to have very deep connection with those? Are you very much a social butterfly? You like to be friends with everybody, sort of thing. There’s no right or wrong answer, there’s only right or wrong for you, depending on the sort of lifestyle that you wanna lead. I wanna lead the sort of life where I’m friends with everybody, I’m a social butterfly, I’m traveling the world, whatever it is I’m doing, and lots of connections is how I feel, you know, meaning and attachment in my life. Therefore, how I spend my time and manage my resources can be very, very different to somebody who’s like, no, it’s just my wife and two kids. Or just my family or whatever those kind of units are. And again, no right or wrong answer, there’s just a right or wrong in a particular case based on how you wanna live your life, or the style of life you wanna live. ‘Cause it’s all about those trade-offs then to say, well, how do I manage and change my time and how it’s spent chasing extra resources, or do I need less, or do I need different types, Or do I just focus on the relationships which actually don’t require a lot of extra time or extra resources in fact to maintain that connection? Does that make sense? So that’s really what MemeWire is, a much more comprehensive kind of view of wealth. And it incorporates all the things that people might normally expect, right through to health, right through to, you know, the amount of money they have, right through to how they spend their time, et cetera, in that kind of integrative way. And that’s a result of seeing people mostly talk about, particularly at the end of their life when they’re most reflective and have the most amount of information, they tend to value their life way more in terms of the people in the room, if you like, at the end, right? And the connections I had and the impact I had with those people. And did I spend my human capital and my abilities through my lifetime, my ideas and efforts, to generate that tends to be the ultimate measure. So that’s wealth.