What Does it Mean to Be Rich?

Everybody wants to be rich. This is probably because of the rich people we see in movies and television shows and comics. Who doesn't want to be Richie Rich? Who doesn't want to be Donald Trump?

Face it, being rich is everyone's fantasy. You want to be able to buy anything you want. You want to be able to go anywhere in your private jet. You want to feel the wind against your face while driving your red SLK.

Being rich may vary from one person to another. If you go out to the sidewalk and you interview different kinds of people, the answers will surely vary.

If you happen to interview an unemployed man, he'd probably answer: "Well, I'd say an income of $100,000 a month."

But when you chance upon an entrepreneur with a set business already, he'd probably say: "Oh, I don't know, probably around 100M dollars a year?"

It all depends on the perspective of the person. The background of that person's life is the basis of their richness, but the fact remains: we all want to be rich.

Most of the time, we want things we don't even understand fully. Do we even understand what "being rich" means?

Apart from the mansion, the helicopter, the private jet, the olympic size swimming pool in your backyard and hundreds of sports cars in our garage and the vault with a sea of dollar bills, do you really know what it means to be rich?

Before you go on dreaming about the ideal richness you crave for, you should first understand the concept of richness. Then maybe you can gauge your life and declare yourself rich right now.

There are two types of richness, the "working riches" and the "accumulated riches."

Working Riches:

Working riches are the riches that we get monthly. It is our income. It is the riches that involve the sum of money we get in order for us to sustain ourselves. A worker who has a salary of $4,000 dollars a month has working riches of $48,000 a year.

If you are able to provide the basic necessities like food, clothes and shelter for yourself and your family, then you have a pretty normal/average working riches. You have a little more than enough.

But if your working riches can barely sustain a proper lifestyle for yourself alone and you have to go to shelters to get food and you sleep on the streets, then your working riches is very low.

Being rich in this sense means that a month's income can provide for a year's worth of necessities. If you can buy clothes, food and provide shelter for your family and then bring them to a vacation spot once a year, then you are probably rich.

Accumulated Riches:

Accumulated riches are your net worth. This is the sum of money you got in the period of your working career and the investments and properties you have purchased during the duration of your life. Richness here means that you can retire and not worry about providing for yours and your family's future.

Also, being rich in this sense means that you can go on sustaining your lifestyle without compromising the way you live. This also means that you don't need to go on and apply for credit and debt.

You are rich in these terms when you can declare that you are financially free. If you are your own boss and you answer to nobody else but yourself, then that means that you are already made for life.

See, riches come in different forms and it depends on how you see it.

We don't have to own the slew of sports cars and the thousands of acres of land. If we have what it takes to live and we can afford to relax and take it easy without worrying about the future, then we are already rich.

We shouldn't worry if we do not have the 50-bedroom houses and private jet planes. The important thing is we can live our lives freely, hassle-free and boss-free.