When Sahil Bloom went out for a drink one evening in 2021, his friend said something that upended his life: “You’re going to see your parents 15 more times before they die.”
That calculation—based on his parents’ ages (mid-60s at the time) and his infrequent visits home from California to Boston—shook Bloom and, ultimately, made him reprioritize everything. He realized he had been brainwashed, in a way, into focusing on cash as a source of contentment when there were other types of wealth he needed to build.
To find true happiness, Bloom says in his latest book, “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life,” we need to think of other kinds of prosperity beyond finances, including time, social, mental, and physical wealth. Each is important individually, Bloom writes, but woven together they help build a “comprehensively fulfilling existence.”
The book is also inspired by a conversation with an acquaintance who had recently sold his company and made $100 million. When Bloom asked if the man felt happier with all those riches, the friend told him a story: To celebrate, he had rented a yacht for a week, but then one of his guests looked over to an even more luxurious yacht and said, “Whoa, I wonder who’s in that one!”
The comment deflated him.
Bloom’s point? “There’s always going to be a bigger boat.”
Or, in other words, stop chasing whatever mega-yachts the world says you should want. In an adapted excerpt from his book, Bloom offers advice on how to build the five types of wealth—along with handy tools, graphs, calculators, and exercises—so you can design your own “dream life” around your priorities.
Time Wealth
How many moments do you have remaining with your loved ones?
Time wealth, Bloom says, is “the freedom to choose how to spend your time, whom to spend it with, where to spend it, and when to trade it for something else.” To assess your time wealth, Bloom offers five statements and asks you to assign a number to each, from zero to four:
Zero=Strongly disagree
One=Disagree
Two=Neutral
Three=Agree
Four=Strongly agree
Here are the statements:
1. I have a deep awareness of the finite, impermanent nature of my time and its importance as my most precious asset.
2. I have a clear understanding of the two to three most important priorities in my personal and professional lives.
3. I am able to consistently direct attention and focus to the important priorities that I have identified.
4. I rarely feel too busy or scattered to spend time on the most important priorities.
5. I am in control of my calendar and priorities.
The higher your total, the more time wealth you have.
To increase your time wealth, try this: Bloom swears by Stephen Covey’s Eisenhower Matrix, inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who is thought to have said: “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”