Today we’re revisiting an episode from February 2025, examining an understanding of wealth that goes beyond the financial.
A friend once asked Sahil Bloom how often he saw his parents. About once a year, Sahil said.
How old are they? Mid-60s.
His friend did the math out loud. If they live to 80, you’ll see them 15 more times.
Sahil was 30, living in California and making great money at a venture fund. Within 45 days of that conversation, he quit his job, sold his house and moved across the country to be near family.
He’s now managing partner of SRB Ventures, an early-stage fund backing more than 60 startups, and he writes The Curiosity Chronicle, a newsletter read by millions. His book, “The 5 Types of Wealth,” is a New York Times bestseller.
His framework starts with a scoring problem. Financial wealth gets measured every day. Time, social, mental and physical wealth run in the background, unmeasured, until something forces you to look.
You’ll get exercises for each. Build an energy calendar that tracks which activities charge you up and which drain you. Map your relationships by how healthy and how frequent they are. Ask what your family and your community need from you. Define what “enough” means in dollars, then write the number down.
Sahil also walks through anti-goals — the things you refuse to sacrifice on the way to a goal — and Memento Mori, the Roman habit of keeping your own death in view.
Two questions run underneath all of it. Think about how you spent yesterday. Would your 10-year-old self be impressed? Would your 90-year-old self?
You don’t experience all four seasons in a single day. Sahil argues your life runs on seasons too. Some stretches call for financial growth. Others call for family.
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Key Takeaways
- Wealth Is a Portfolio, Not a Single Number: Most people optimize only for financial wealth because it’s easiest to measure. Sahil argues true wealth spans five domains, and neglecting four while chasing the fifth isn’t actually winning.
- The Math That Changes Everything: A friend’s calculation — that Sahil would only see his parents about 15 more times before they likely died — wasn’t a new fact, just an old one reframed sharply enough to finally change his behavior.
- Energy, Not Just Time, Is the Resource to Track: Building time wealth isn’t about finding more hours in the day. It’s mapping which activities energize you versus drain you, then shifting toward more of the former.
- Relationships Need the Same Rigor as a Portfolio: Sahil suggests mapping relationships by health and frequency, treating social wealth as something you actively manage rather than something that just happens to you.
- Life Runs in Seasons, Not Daily Balance: You don’t expect all four seasons in one day, so don’t expect perfect balance across all five wealth types every day either — some periods lean financial, others lean family, by design.
Resources
For more from Sahil Bloom, find him on major social platforms or visit fivetypesofwealth.com.
Chapters
Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads.
(0:00) Would your 10-year-old self be impressed with your life?
(1:46) Sahil’s wake-up call: seeing parents only 15 more times before they die
(4:19) The Tail End: visualizing how few books and moments remain in life
(6:56) Small changes that dramatically increase time with loved ones
(13:26) The tension between ambition and presence; why “later” becomes “never”
(17:42) Why we measure financial wealth but not other forms of wealth
(19:47) The five types of wealth: financial, time, social, mental, physical
(30:09) Creating an “energy calendar” to track what energizes vs drains you
(38:09) Relationship mapping: evaluating connections by health and frequency
(42:33) Goals vs anti-goals: what you’re unwilling to sacrifice for success
(51:17) Why your purpose doesn’t need to be your work
(54:46) The 30-day health challenge: movement, nutrition, recovery
(57:05) Vonnegut and Heller on having “enough” vs wanting more
(1:02:21) Memento Mori: using a life calendar to visualize finite time
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