Rich Vs. Wealthy: What is the Difference?

Generally, the terms "affluent", "wealthy", and "rich" are thrown around a lot and are generally considered to be equal in their meaning. This is actually a major misconception as there is a very important distinction they can be made especially between the terms wealthy and rich. When thinking about it, however, it's very difficult to see where one might draw the line between someone who is rich, and someone who is wealthy. Additionally, should someone who is dreaming about all the great things that they can do in their life try to be rich, or should they dream about someday becoming wealthy.

The concept of being rich has many different meanings depending on what you're talking about. People can be defined as being rich in the traditional definition, meaning that they have a lot of money, but they can also be emotionally rich or spiritually rich. Even many types of desserts are considered rich! With all these definitions of 'rich', what does it actually mean? My personal opinion is that being rich is a relative term. For example, a person living in poverty in a Third World country would consider even the lowliest beggar living in the United States to be rich because he has easy access to food. That same beggar, living on the street in New York, would see the person who has his own apartment or even his own room to be rich. To take it one step further, a person who is teased or picked on my consider a popular person to be rich because they have so many friends. As you can see, the definition of rich is variable depending on the subjects upon which you apply the definition to. If you were really trying to be rich, all you would need to do was surround yourself with people who have less of that thing than you do. For example, if you want to be rich in terms of your net worth, and you couldn't do that in your country, all you have to do with the move to a country that is less well off and you would be considered rich.

Being wealthy is a very different thing from being rich. While wealth is often confused with richness, my personal belief is that being wealthy is a much more pure in satisfying experience than being rich. The idea of being financially wealthy is that you can stop doing anything that resembles work and still manage to survive at the same quality of life that you have previously become accustomed to. This is a powerful idea because it is not influenced by any outside factors as being rich is. The subsistence farmer living in an undeveloped region of Africa has exactly the same opportunity to be wealthy as the businessman working in the financial district of Boston. Additionally, there is no rule that says for someone to be wealthy they must adhere to a minimum quality of life. The person who is used to drinking cappuccinos at Starbucks all day may only need to downsize their life slightly in order to become wealthy and free from the stresses of having to work.

Hopefully, you now have a better idea of the difference between being rich and being wealthy and how important this difference is. A final differentiating factor between being rich and being wealthy is the amount of stress that each label carries with it. In order to be rich, you are required to maintain a set level of wealth relative to your peers in order to maintain the status of being 'rich'. If instead, you were to choose to be wealthy, it would not matter how you looked relative to your peers because the only person that you are accountable to is yourself.