Reconsidering what true wealth means, Wade highlights the blessings we often take for granted in the U.S.—from accessible healthcare and rapid transportation to home comforts and advanced communication. Even modest incomes here afford a lifestyle far beyond what much of the world experiences. By shifting our perspective, we realize that wealth isn’t just about accumulating more, but appreciating what we have and using our resources to help others. In the end, he suggests, true financial freedom comes from embracing gratitude and finding joy in what we already have.
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You Are Already Wealthy!
What’s up, money masters? I am here for another episode of the show. I felt super inclined to talk to you about something that I deem extremely important, and that is our perspective on life. Sometimes, we need a shift in perspective or a paradigm shift, you might call it, to help us understand truly how blessed we are in the United States. This hit me like a ton of bricks. I need to share some things with you that I’ve learned.
It’s right around Thanksgiving 2024 time at the time of this recording. We’re about a week out from that. I’ve got my orange shirt on, representing fall, and I’ve got a book behind my right shoulder, for those watching, called The Blessed Life. I feel such gratitude this time of year. I know you’re reading this after Thanksgiving. Hopefully, you’ve had a wonderful holiday and are looking forward to the Christmas season, gift-giving, generosity, and the ability we have to do that as well as the ease of access to resources we have to enjoy great food, time together, and be transported wherever you need to go by air or by car with great convenience, great speed, and safety.
I want to talk about some of the things that set us apart. In the debates about the presidential election, there was this discussion about how rich we are as a nation and how we lead the world in terms of wealth. We gloss over that. We take that for granted. My intention is to give some perspective to what we have here so that in that space of gratitude, we can continue to strive for more to continue, to thrive in what we’re doing, to seek out becoming the best version of ourselves but also have the perspective that what we have is pretty amazing.
Breaking Down The Evolution Of Healthcare
I did some research in preparation for this. I wanted to come up with the top five things that we have that other nations don’t or that the rest of the world doesn’t. The first thing that came up was healthcare. I did some research from 1920 to 2024 on what’s different about what life was like many years ago, the wealthy class compared to the low to middle class.
The main thing is back then in 1920, there were high mortality rates. There were no antibiotics. There were limited hospital treatments. We were coming into the possibility of immunizations and vaccinations. Surgeries were still very rudimentary. Accessibility to medical care was pretty abysmal. We take for granted the fact that we have emergency rooms, ambulances that come get us if we need to, or 911 so we can get people to come to our homes quickly. We don’t have to wait for a doctor to come to our home. We can go to the facility very quickly.
We had a situation in my family life where there was an allergic reaction to some food and the person wasn’t able to breathe. It was because of that that we had to rush him to the hospital. We took him to Instacare. They gave an anaphylactic shock, that thing you jam into your leg that is an antihistamine blocker. In an anaphylactic shock, you need one of those EpiPens. That’s it.
This person needed an EpiPen but then still had some sort of allergic reaction to that so an ambulance had to take him over to the emergency room. We spent half a day in the emergency room. It was a pretty scary thing, but because of the understanding we have about medical care, this person was saved. Their life was preserved because of this and we only needed half a day to get through that situation, get home, and recover after that. It’s pretty amazing, the fact that we have medical care so readily accessible, which was not. I’m trying to give perspective to what the wealthy had many years ago compared to what we have. What we have now is extremely better even for the poorest of the poor in the United States.
Appreciating The Convenience Of Transportation
How about transportation? Back then, automobiles were luxuries. International travel was slow and rare. Think about this. People were traveling by ship for 3 weeks across the Atlantic Ocean to go to Europe, and then they would spend 1 month to 2 to 3 months there. They would have to completely shift what was going on in their lives to be able to take such a trip. It was dramatic what had to happen for time to be taken off to be able to go do such a thing and it was very expensive.
This time, cars and affordable air travel are commonplace. I flew across the nation multiple times in 2024 to go to different conferences, help people understand money better, and gain knowledge myself. I went up to Boise, Idaho, and back in a single day. It’s a one-hour plane ride there. I spent a few hours there for a race for my son because he was in a cross-country race, and then I came back that afternoon. It was amazing how quickly I could do that.
I’ve been to China. It takes about 16 to 17 hours in a single airplane ride from Los Angeles to Beijing. This was back in 2017. I took a trip over there for 3 or 4 days as I was doing a business venture to go visit a manufacturing facility for a toy product that I was working on with my family as an entrepreneurial venture. That was incredible.
The following year, we took an airplane ride for about 17 to 18 hours directly from the West coast of the United States up across almost the North Pole to Dubai. We landed in Dubai and spent a day and a half there, and then took another four-hour ride to get to Kenya. We spent a couple of weeks out on a Kenyan safari doing a camera safari. I’m not a hunter, but I went with my dad. He’s retired so he is doing some traveling. That is astounding, the fact that we could spend that many hours in safe airplane travel where many years ago, that was an impossibility. We could not even fathom that at that point in time. The wealthy class were the ones taking those trips, not the typical low to middle class.
How Home Comforts Improved Daily Life
How about typical home comforts? I’m standing in a home office with electric lighting and heating. It’s cold enough at this time of year. I’ve got my furnace on and a central air system that allows me to keep warm through a natural gas pipe directly into my home. I’ve got a water heater that keeps warm water flowing throughout the house. That’s a relatively new thing that the hot water heaters are a thing.
We have our clothes washing facilities and dishwashing facilities. We have multiple bathrooms and flushing toilets. We have cooling systems in the summer. We have insulated windows to keep out the sound and the cold. It’s not drafty in here. It’s 70 to 72 degrees in my house. It’s amazing. It’s like being in Hawaii every day except it’s not as beautiful. We have these comforts. These creature comforts that we have are amazing.
Tech Transformation Through Communication
How about communication? I’m a fanboy of Tesla, the company owned by Elon Musk. The inventor, Nikola Tesla, from many years ago, envisioned in his autobiography wireless communication being possible. Nobody believed him but he knew it was possible. That’s all we do. We communicate wirelessly with each other. In fact, you’re doing that, reading this through an internet connection. It is astounding, the fact that we can communicate.
I do it all day long. My work is through Zoom conferences and video meetings across the nation with people. It is so much fun. It is so cool to be able to have a real connection with people through these video mechanisms, internet communication, and wireless communication. It’s mind-blowing what we can do with that.
We’re coming into a new age, the age of AI. Artificial Intelligence is enhancing our ability to perform functions in our day. In fact, I used an AI to help me write this outline and to do the research, and I did it in about ten minutes. I didn’t have to spend hours researching all the different Wikipedia and encyclopedia books and all that. It was able to source this material and help me consolidate it into this episode. It’s amazing what we have for a few dollars to have access, and in many cases, it’s free.
Back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, I was writing handwritten letters and mailing them when I was out doing missionary service for my church. I lived in France for a couple of years. I wrote a lot of handwritten letters and sent them through the snail mail system as well as a few emails, but a lot of it was still, many years ago, handwritten letters. Imagine that, the fact we have such easy communication now. Back then, it was letters and telegrams. It was early phone systems that were wired systems that were coming online.
In fact, my grandmother on my dad’s side was a telephone operator. She would receive a signal and she would take the plug out of the wall, plug it into the next spot, and connect to the two different people trying to reach each other. It was a manual thing. Now, it’s electronic, but back then, it was a manual thing. There were all these women sitting against this wall receiving these notifications, “I need to talk to so-and-so at this number,” and they were like, “Let me plug you in.” They’d get on the other line and say, “So-and-so’s trying to reach you.” They would connect people. That was many years ago.
How Entertainment Became Virtually Limitless
How about entertainment? We have almost unlimited entertainment options now, but back then, they were limited to live performances and radio was coming online. The ability to receive a voice wirelessly was starting to come about in the late 1920s. It is astounding the fact that this is ubiquitous, common, and taken for granted. We have streaming services. We have video gaming. We have unlimited online content. In fact, I’m a part of that content library. You’re reading this as a part of that amazing content library. Hopefully, this is a little bit entertaining as well as informational. It puts us in the right context, knowing some of these things.
Understanding The US Median Household Income
Since this is the Wealth Acceleration show, I wanted to talk not just about the external things outside of money, but I also wanted to talk about some of the monetary aspects of our wealth in the United States compared to that of other parts of the world. These are some facts that I came up with. In the United States, the median household income is $80,610 a year. Median means middle. If you take the entire range of incomes, the exact middle income is $80,000. If you include the low end and the upper end of that spectrum and get an average, the average household income is $114,395. The median is $80,000 and the average is $114,000 in a household of 2 income earners, in many cases.
Continuing on, I wanted to see what some of the upper thresholds were, the top 20%, top 10%, top 5%, and top 1% of income earners in the United States. The top 20% of households are making $142,000. The top 10% are making $234,000 or almost $235,000. The top 5% are making $315,500. The top 1% of earners are making a little over $600,000. If you’re making in the six figures as a household, you’re doing quite well. It’s a great income.
What’s interesting though is perspective. I started this show with perspective. What I find really interesting is our expectation of lifestyle, given the incomes that we have, feels low. An $80,000 to $114,000 income to the median versus the average. I know when I was young, I was like, “Six figures is ridiculous. I can’t believe anyone who makes over $100,000.”
Our expectation of lifestyle given the incomes we have feels low.
If you’re not making $100,000, it’s really hard to get by because housing is expensive. It is $2,000 to $4,000 a month in most cases for an apartment or a modest-sized home. Oftentimes, it is $4,000 to $6,000 in this market for housing. If you’re able to purchase a home, it’s pretty astounding what things cost. We do need to give that its proper perspective too. We are a wealthy nation but we also have high costs. I don’t discount that in any way. I want to give some perspective to the numbers and then compare them to the global numbers.
In the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world, here’s the context about the global income distributions. The median income in the world is $2,920 per person per year. That’s not a household. That’s an individual. There are eight billion people. Median means there are still some people making a lot less than that and people making more. The middle income is $2,920 per person. In the US, the median would put you in the top 15% of global incomes. If you’re making $80,000 a year as a household, you’re in the top 15% globally. The top 20% in the US is equal to the top 2% globally. The top 20% is making $142,500 a year as an individual or as a household. You’re in the top 2% globally. If you’re in the top 1% in the United States, you’re in the top 0.1% globally.
Encounters With Immigrants From Impoverished Communities
The perspective on US wealth is that even medium US earners enjoy a higher quality of life than most of the global population. We have so much to be grateful for. I gasp at some of these things. I’ve been in France. In my missionary service, I met a lot of immigrants that I got to meet from North Africa and Middle Africa coming from very impoverished places.
I had some people from Romania who were refugees and immigrants in France who I met who were living in an abandoned building that had been condemned. They found a little home for themselves in what used to be a bathroom. The size may be even smaller than the room I’m standing in, which is about 10×10 feet. This is about a 100-square-foot room. Their entire family, a husband, wife, and at least 2 children, were living in this 100-square-foot tiny space that used to be a bathroom. It broke my heart watching this.
They were kind enough to feed us. They had a hot plate, a pot, some water, some oil, a little bit of Bouillon to give it a little bit of flavor, and a little bit of salt. It was this broth. That’s all they had to offer us in exchange for the Word we were sharing with them about God. That put some perspective on me. It was heart-wrenching because I walked out of that meeting with that family and I saw their son running off and waving goodbye to us and he had this banana in his hands that was black and mushy. Yet, it was what they had. They had to beg and borrow, and maybe even still, to get some of the resources that they had to survive as a family. This is happening all over the world.
Embrace Gratitude And Be Generous
The church I belong to has these giving machines and there’s a campaign called Light the World. If you haven’t seen that yet, look up Light the World. You can give meals, chickens, goats, and clothing. We can use some of the wealth we have and be generous to those around the world who are less fortunate. That’s my invitation. Get out and be generous.
Wealth is way more than just money. It’s about access to resources, opportunities, and conveniences. Reflect on the immense progress that we’ve made. Find a real place in your heart for gratitude. I’ve heard it said that gratitude is close to godliness. There’s a book titled Power vs. Force. This guy does some analysis on different resonances. Do you know how energies have different resonances like sound pitches have different resonances? The energy or the resonance of gratitude is the highest on the scale that he created. Looking at negative tones and negative words versus positive words, gratitude was the highest on that scale, which suggested empirically that it was close to godliness.
I invite you guys to find gratitude on a regular basis. Daily, find reasons to be grateful for what you have. I encourage you to share particularly this episode at this time of year. Invite people to have the perspective that we are wealthy. Even though you might feel poor or you might be struggling to make some of your bills because of the nature of the expense in the United States, we’re still extremely blessed. We have access to so many things.
Reflect on the immense progress we have made in the past century. Find a real place in your heart for gratitude.
I invite you to give a little bit more this time of year. Get out and use Light the World or perhaps something else like that where you can give real-world benefit to people, not just dollars. Go give some of your time if you don’t have dollars. Give some of your time somewhere. Go do some service for somebody and recognize that you are, in fact, wealthy.
One of my favorite definitions of financial freedom comes from one of my mentors. He said, “Financial freedom is having what you want but also wanting what you have.” We want unlimited things. We go and acquire these things. Once you get them, do you still want them? Does it give you fulfillment after you’ve purchased it to keep it long-term? I want you guys to have that sense that you are wealthy in the context of having what you want but also wanting what you have. I’ll leave you with that.
Financial freedom is having what you want but also wanting what you have.
Thanks for tuning in. I love you. If you’re finding value in this content, please like and subscribe to it. Leave some comments and create some dialogue on the YouTube page. Do an iTunes or Apple Podcasts review for me. That helps make it more accessible to more people. My mission is to help thousands of people with their financial lives, to have the proper perspective, and to make money easy and fun to work with, not stressful. I want people to have relief and have confidence that they can have a very successful financial life. Take care. We’ll see you in the next episode.
Episode Resources
- Light the World
- The Blessed Life
- Power vs. Force
- Wealth Acceleration Podcast on YouTube
- Wealth Acceleration Podcast on Apple Podcasts