What is Wealth?

Interviews have been edited and condensed.

Anuj Peddada, Colorado Springs

Anuj Peddada and his family immigrated to the United States from India when he was 6, and he remembers the sparseness of those early years. “We really had nothing,” he said. “We were in poverty.”

Mr. Peddada, 53, works as a radiation oncologist at the Penrose Cancer Center in Colorado Springs. With more than 22 years of practice under his belt, he is at the top of his field.

"It’s the freedom to have some choices,” he said, explaining what wealth has meant to him. “It means you have the luxury of being able to provide for your family and determine how much work you want to do.”

Mr. Peddada works a lot. On his days off, he pores over medical journals for hours, breaking in the afternoon for a mountain-biking venture with his son – a hobby Mr. Peddada says his wife and daughter are too smart to pursue. 

But, added Mr. Peddada, who treats cancers and brain tumors, the reading doesn’t feel like work. “My job is a calling. I love what I do.”

Wealth, he said, “is experiences and time to do the things you want to do.” — Avalon A. Manly 

Kyle Webb, Los Angeles

For Kyle Webb, 32, wealth is about opportunity and access. His financial and business success came from two places: One was luck and the other was being born to entrepreneurially minded parents.

Mr. Webb is the chief financial officer of his family’s business, Webb Family Enterprises, which operates 16 McDonald’s franchises in Southern California.

He said that his parents set him up with his first McDonald’s franchise and that, along with a good education — a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Morehouse College and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California — set him on his track. Webb says he is not quite what he would call wealthy yet, but he has a clear view of what that will be.

“Having the financial freedom to contribute to the things that you want to contribute,” Mr. Webb said. “That’s measured by earning twice the income that is required to sustain your cost of living via passive income.”

He said that wealth “provides access to more,” and that it should extend for “future generations to be able to have, again, more access and more opportunities and to be able to extend it to other people whether they are in your familial line or if there are opportunities for other people in your community that you feel warrant opportunity.”

Citing the McDonald’s tagline “America’s best first job,” Mr. Webb takes pride in the way his family’s business extends both access and opportunity to its employees. — Jarrett Hill

Rachel Talton, Akron, Ohio

Wealth is about community, good health and service to others for Rachel Talton. Ms. Talton, 52, is founder of the Flourish Conference for Women in Leadership, and chief executive of Synergy Marketing Strategy & Research in Akron, Ohio.

“I know we are blessed financially because we have the freedom to do the things that we want not only today but tomorrow,” said Ms. Talton, who lives with her husband in the suburb of Richfield.

As a little girl, Ms. Talton knew she wanted to help people, and yearned to be a psychiatrist. In college, she realized she “might not become the scientist I wanted to be” but had a way with words, and switched to marketing. She ultimately earned a doctorate at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Financial success doesn’t guarantee happiness, she said, but it provides a kind of freedom.

“Wealth means loving what you do and the contributions that you make,” Ms. Talton said. “It means being able to be financially free to do the things you love, to live the way you want to live. But it also means being healthy, and to know that your family and the ones you care about are healthy and spiritually whole, and that they’re contributing.

“If every day I feel I’ve given back, and I have the freedom to do the things that I love and serve other people, then I’m happy to be happy. It makes me so fulfilled.” — Carlo Wolff

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/your-money/what-is-wealth.html