Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 7. I want to talk today about what I consider the highest form of wealth. Let me start by just saying,

wealth is obviously easy to measure. Everyone can add it up, but it's very hard to value.

And I want to make a claim that the highest form of wealth is not just how much money you have. The highest form of wealth is the ability to do what you want, when you want, for as long as you want, it's just controlling your time and giving

yourself independence and autonomy.

That's the most value that I think you can get out of wealth, and that's what I want to talk about today.

A quick story to summarize this point here. George Vanderbilt, who was the grandson of

Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the richest people to ever walk this planet.

He spent six years building the Biltmore House, which is 135,000 square feet.

Hard to wrap your head around how big that house is.

It's about three times the size of the White House,

or it's roughly 30% larger than the average Costco warehouse. It had 40 master bedrooms, whatever that

means, and had a full-time staff of 400 people. Just unamagitably large. This is just the guys at Summer House. But here's the

craziest thing about the Biltmore. George Vanderbilt allegedly spent very little

time there.

Because it was so big it didn't even feel like a house.

He told a friend that the Biltmore was, quote,

utterly unaddressed to any possible arrangement of normal life.

It felt like he was living in a hotel by himself or a corporate office building.

It was not enjoyable at all.

There's a dining room that seats a hundred people and he goes in there by himself to eat breakfast in the morning. It's ridiculous. It was just too big, too ostentatious to even enjoy living it. So he never spent that much time there.

The house, nevertheless nevertheless it costs so much money to maintain

that it nearly bankrupt George Vanderbilt. 90% of the land was eventually sold off to repay his tax debts and the house it was

...