What is wealth? Excess money? Stuff? Perpetual vacation? The best definition I’ve heard is that true wealth is time. Yes, that’s right. Time.
American society (and, arguably, much of the world) is obsessed with gaining possessions: cars, homes, money…stuff. But what’s the point? To get more stuff? My dad always use to tell me, “Even if you own your stuff, it owns you.” You still have to care for it, maintain it, protect it. Right?
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But what about time? Sweet, sweet time. With time you can visit with family and friends. Time allows you to leisurely decide what you’d really like to do today. Time allows you to savor that bottle of wine, the view from the veranda, or the flamenco dancers in the zocalo.
So since we’ve established that it’s not about a certain amount of money (although who can live without it?) or a certain accumulation of nice things, let’s define exactly what wealth could be…
- A small condo somewhere on the coast of Mexico where you could live a very comfortable life for less that $36,000 per year.
- The ability to work 3 days per week and spend time volunteering and hanging out with loved ones the rest of the week.
- A yearly sabbatical to learn and hone a new skill. Perhaps Latvian sheep rearing?
The point is that it doesn’t necessarily require a ton of money to do, well, pretty much anything you want that meets our definition of wealth. You simply have to be willing to tear yourself away from the American “ideal”.
Lifestyle engineering is all about being very purposeful in the way you put it all together. So next time you’re tempted to raise your cost of living by purchasing a new car or that extra 1,500 sq ft that you don’t need in your new house take the example of the following couple who, by all appearances, have a pretty idealistic lifestyle.
…Every winter we would go down to Mazatlan, Mexico, where we owned a timeshare. We loved the warm weather (usually 25° to 29°C during the day in the winter months) and the long sandy beaches and the very Mexican feel of the place. We started off visiting for two weeks a year, then it became three. At first, we stuck to the tourist areas. But Mazatlan is a good-sized city of about 600,000 people and after a while we discovered what’s known as El Centro — the city centre — and we really liked it. The houses are old there — some go back to the late-1800s — and they’re very affordable. As well, there is lots of local culture, great shopping, an open-air marketplace and plenty of restaurants and cafes….
