What is the definition of rich?

Today while I was walking to the gym to hit my shoulders, one thoughts just popped into my head. “What is the definition of rich? How much money do we need to become a rich person?” I think many people have their own definitions about rich. I used to have my own definition but today another definition just popped in. And I want to talk about it.

I used to think that what being rich is making more money from passive income than spending. Passive income could be dividend from investment, advertisement fee from youtube channels or blogs and loyalties from patent. If someone has passive income greater than expenditure, this person’s balance would grow bigger and bigger. It would diverge to infinity as time elapses assuming infinite amount of lifetime. I have been holding this definition for several years.

But recently my mind has changed. I found out that I don’t really spend much of my income. I don’t have fancy cars or opulent houses that need significant amount of upkeep. I don’t think I need that kind of stuff and I believe that there are many rich people who don’t own those luxurious things. Still, I think there are discrepancy between me and rich people.

I realized that despite I don’t want that kind of fancy stuffs, I don’t have an option to purchase them. On the other hand, rich people can choose whether to buy or not. Although they don’t own things, they still possess choices. In this sense, I started to think that becoming a rich is getting more choices.

In this perspective, money is not an absolute measure of richness. Someone who does not have money could be rich. Rather, number of choices a person has would be a measure that tells the person is rich or not.

It could be applied to many circumstances such as buying grocery, going to school and dating. Person who can make a choice is a rich person. No matter how much money he/she owns, it is useless if he/she cannot make a decision to spend it.

This thoughts just popped from my head. This definition could be crude but I think it still makes sense. I hope I can get more opportunities to freely choose in my future. And I wish everyone who is reading this silly article also get more choices in the future. Thank you for reading.

Rich person is free to make a choice yet poor person has no other option. Rich person chooses and poor person is chosen.