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#07 · Coming soon
Trailer · Planned for Tuesday 13 OctoberKimon Ivanov · Cedric Pots · Jean-Maurice Henkel

Do you need wealth before you can have friends?

“Would you count a WhatsApp contact as a friend?”

Send us a question before we recordFollow the show on SpotifyBefore you listen ↓Join the book waitlist
What we will argue about

Money works like salt. It strengthens the taste of almost everything, but nobody makes a meal of salt. In this episode we ask whether you have to build monetary wealth before you can afford the other kinds (friends, time, health, a calm mind), or whether the order is the other way round. We end on a test we all liked: if you are wealthy and still enjoy simple pleasures, then life's greatest pleasures really are free.

Three colleagues, one question, recording soon.
Layer 2 · The questions

Why we're asking this now

Our talk on success left a question hanging. If success isn't the villa and the watch, what is wealth? We wanted to separate the wealth you can count from the wealth that counts, and to find out whether one has to come before the other.

Follows from #6 Definition of successLast time we asked what success is. This time we ask what it is worth, and to whom.
The main question

Life's greatest pleasures are free. Do we need to acquire wealth before we can acquire social wealth?

The sub-questions

The questions the conversation is built on.

  1. Would you count a WhatsApp contact towards your social wealth?
  2. Is there an optimal mix of social, time, physical and mental wealth, and is it different for every person?
  3. Does friendship mean living for someone else?

Questions for you

To think about on your own, before or after listening.

  1. Who would walk in when the rest of the world walks out?
  2. Which of your friendships feel like an asset, and which feel like an obligation?
  3. What did you last pay for that a friend could have given you for free?

Questions to discuss

For a coffee, a class or a reading group.

  1. Is a Ferrari you never drive part of your wealth?
  2. Can social wealth get you things that money can't, like a house, a job or trust?
  3. If you serve a friend, are you still equals?
The ten-year question

If you had held today's view of wealth ten years ago, what would you have done differently?

Layer 3 · The tension

Where the conversation pulls

Tension A

Money first

Without a financial base you can't afford the time, the travel or the calm that friendships need. Comfort comes first, then connection.

The practical view
Tension B

Friends first

The pleasures that matter most cost little. Social wealth compounds over decades, and if you chase money all your life it may be too late to build friendships at fifty.

The long view
Tension C

Salt, not the meal

Money amplifies what you already value. Music with friends at home becomes a concert abroad, but only if the friends were there first.

After The Wealth Ladder
The line we keep returning to

A friendship that demands you give up your values isn't an asset. It's a liability.

Layer 4 · A first taste

A first taste

Taste 01

Three kinds of friendship

Aristotle distinguished friendships of utility, of pleasure and of virtue. Only the last kind, admiring someone's character, survives when the usefulness and the fun run out. Real social wealth tends to be built over many years, or through hard times you went through together.

“Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.”Epicurus
Taste 02

Likes are not connection

A hundred likes and a long contact list can feel like wealth. We called it junk validation: it fills you up without feeding you.

Taste 03

Where people live longest

In the world's Blue Zones, long lives come from social ties and from the environment: daily walking, stairs to church, simple food. Wealth there looks less like money and more like a way of living.

Layer 5 · Before you listen

Find your own starting point

Before you listen

Your wealth balance

Before you listen, rate where you stand today on five kinds of wealth. There are no right answers. Notice which one you scored lowest, then listen for it in the episode.

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Layer 6 · Ask before we record

Questions for the recording

We haven't recorded this one yet. Answer one of these, or send the question you most want us to argue about. We'll read a selection on air, with your permission.

  • Is there an income level after which friends start to matter more than money?

  • Can the very wealthy still tell who their real friends are?

  • What is the return on a friendship, and should we even ask?

Before we record

Your question can change the conversation. Send it now and it may become one of our sub-questions, or the opening of the episode.

Questions that make it into the episode will appear here after it's released.
Layer 7 · Go deeper

Keep pulling the thread

Get ready

We'll announce the release in The Minutes and on Spotify. Until then, the questions above are yours to think about.

Get notified

Reading list

  • The Wealth LadderNick MaggiulliSource of the money-as-salt image we start from.
  • Nicomachean Ethics, books VIII–IXAristotleThe three kinds of friendship.
  • The Blue ZonesDan BuettnerWhat the longest-living people have in common.

Where this question leads

#6 Definition of successWhy do smart people stay in toxic success?
#1 A philosophy of financeTime value, risk and return, applied to a life.
#4 Heart & mindThe piggy bank of stored time.

The Minutes. After each episode: the edited notes, the quotes we argued about and the question we couldn't close. One e-mail per episode.

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