I recently took a day off to look after a grandson who was home from preschool while getting over a fever. We watched cartoons together before going to Barnes & Noble to claim the reward I promised for taking medicine he detests. (Yes, I embrace bribery in child development, but that isn’t my point.)
After the bookstore we went out for pizza, then to a car wash where he enjoyed seeing the big machines — and got another toy. After delivering his loot to his work-from-home mom, we proceeded to a playground where he insisted on playing tag with me, on and around equipment that wasn’t meant for Medicare recipients. Then it was home again to watch Disney’s “Brother Bear” while his mom picked up his baby brother from daycare.
While she was out I said to him, “I think you had a good day with Papa.” To which my grandson replied, “I’m still having a good day with you.”
If you ask me what it means to be successful, I can’t give you a better example: Taking time off work to look after a grandchild who lives in a loving home maintained by two outstanding parents, and giving him a joyful day that maybe he will hazily remember when he is grown.
This, obviously, is a very personal definition. From my balcony in Fort Lauderdale, I can see all sorts of boats, ranging from simple Boston Whalers to classy cabin cruisers and massive megayachts going past on the New River. I admire the boats, many of which cost millions (or tens of millions) of dollars that I will never have available to spend on a pleasure craft. But I don’t care. Watching the boats is fun, but owning one would take time and money that I would rather devote to my family. Which isn’t to say that boat-owners don’t love and enjoy their families as much as I do mine. We all make choices according to our personal priorities and within the constraints of our resources.
If you had a billion dollars to spend, would you spend it on a longshot bid for public office? I think most people would answer “no.” Yet Michael Bloomberg did exactly that in a four-month span during the 2020 presidential primary season. Bloomberg failed to win the nomination, let alone the presidency, but the former New York City mayor, billionaire media tycoon (even after all that campaign spending) and philanthropist is still a successful person by most anybody’s standards. The only standards that matter, however, are Michael Bloomberg’s. I certainly hope that he considers himself successful, given all he has achieved in life.
Achievement is often measured in money, and money is certainly a major component of success. Money and “success” are hardly synonymous, though, for many if not most of us.
The 2024 Paris Olympics feature 45 separate sports. A few — football (soccer to us Yanks), basketball, tennis, golf and hockey — are high-profile global businesses, where very good competitors earn a very good living, and those at the top can do much better than that. Others seem to exist to prove that money is often beside the point in measuring accomplishment. I would guess that becoming an Olympic champion in trampoline or canoe slalom requires comparable effort to the big-ticket sports I mentioned. Unless I am grossly uninformed, however, the financial upside is decidedly small-ticket. Those who excel at “minor” Olympic sports must do so largely in pursuit of excellence for its own sake, though I’d guess those competitors don’t think of their own sports as minor at all.
Apart from a handful who become wealthy purely through accidents of birth or circumstance, wealthy people are almost invariably successful at something. But not all successful people, of course, become “wealthy” by various definitions of that term.
In the first chapter of our just-updated book, “The High Achiever’s Guide to Wealth,” I observed that while a million dollars is a considerable sum of money, having that sum does not necessarily mean someone is wealthy. The Federal Reserve reported in 2022 that the average U.S. household’s net worth was $1,063,700. But this is skewed higher by a small number of people (like Mike Bloomberg, to name one) who are famous and less-famous billionaires. The median household net worth reported in that Federal Reserve survey was just $192,900. Half the reporting households had net assets, after considering debts, below that figure.
A Charles Schwab & Co. survey released in 2023 said most Americans would not describe a $1 million net worth as wealthy. The survey cited an average response of around $2.2 million. Yet the same Schwab survey that produced the $2.2 million figure reported 72% of respondents who said their personal definition of wealth depends more upon how a person lives his or her life, rather than on net worth.
In other words, net worth is how we judge whether someone else is wealthy, and by that yardstick, successful. We judge our own circumstances differently. We ask ourselves: Are our physical needs met? Do we find our work fulfilling as well as rewarding? Do we feel safe, and secure, and respected, and appropriately valued?
Back in 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized that there is a hierarchy of needs, beginning with physical needs, then security, then emotional needs, then the esteem of others, and finally that of “self-actualization,” which I would call the achievement of one’s own satisfaction and self-esteem. If you possess all of these things, you might consider yourself wealthy.
Maslow’s hierarchy helps us understand why anyone might choose to go into relatively low-paid but high-prestige occupations. Journalism and publishing historically fall into this category. So did teaching, firefighting and law enforcement. The latter group has tended to see pay rise along with appreciation of their importance, while journalism and publishing mainly go in the opposite direction. Performing and fine arts have long been fields where most participants without outside support struggle financially, while a few at the top can reap big monetary rewards.
But money aside, most of us can understand why someone would derive great satisfaction from helping a struggling child learn, or saving a person who is in physical peril, or solving a long-cold case, or winning a Pulitzer prize. If these are your dreams, then achieving them is likely to bring Maslow’s “self-actualization” without regard to monetary gain. Still, all those basic physical and emotional needs must be met, too, for most of us to be truly satisfied with our lives.
Historically, another measure of success — especially in the United States, with its melting-pot tradition of aspiring immigrants — is to provide our children and grandchildren with greater comfort and opportunities than we enjoyed ourselves. Millions migrated to Rust Belt factories in their heyday not because the work was fascinating or emotionally engaging, but because it provided security and a modicum of physical comfort so the next generation could advance. The perceived diminution of that sort of upward mobility across generations, and our debates about how to respond, drives a good deal of American politics today.
An academic treatise published this summer contends that children raised in communities where most adults work regularly have displayed greater upward mobility than children raised in areas where chronic unemployment is more the norm. This appeared to be true regardless of whether the child’s own parents were steadily employed. Merely finding a home and raising a family in one of those more financially self-sustaining neighborhoods could be viewed as success, particularly for someone who did not grow up in such a place.
For that matter, getting married and having children have themselves become something of a luxury in many Western societies, including ours. Achieving them might therefore be seen as some sort of hallmark of success. Demographers have noted that marriage has tended to become more stratified along educational and income lines; the U.S. Census Bureau noted that in 2019, only 8% of newly married couples included a spouse from a high-income and a low-income background. Meanwhile, child care costs (and other costs associated with having children) are frequently blamed for declining birth rates around the world. I don’t think it is fair to generalize that individuals who do not have these attributes are not “successful.” That is a value judgment that we all make for ourselves, and of course sometimes it is a matter of circumstance or chance.
As financial planners, my colleagues and I always start by trying to determine each client’s exact goals, and their priorities among various objectives, so we can aim at whatever is most important. When we wear our professional hats, our job is to discover our client’s definition of success, not to impose our own. One client may wish to own a megayacht. Another may want a chance to win the canoe slalom at some future Olympics.
I count myself extremely lucky, every day. I have a balcony from which I can watch those boats on the New River. I work with colleagues I care for and respect, serving clients who are loyal and appreciative. I have two lovely and accomplished grown daughters, married to excellent men, and beautiful grandchildren. I have been married to the same amazing person for over 40 years, without whom none of this would have happened.
So when one of those grandchildren says he is having a good day with his papa, that’s my gold medal.
