Your Intangible Vital Capital

From Sandy Davis' "Zillience" Newsletter:

(1) Building up “Vital Capital” for Retirement


In my view, the “retirement equation” has two major components. The first is your tangible wealth (i.e., your financial capital), and the second is your intangible wealth (i.e., what I’m going to define as your “vital capital” or your overall well-being).

What concerns me is how few of us are paying close attention the intangible half of the equation: the importance of building up your “vital capital.” I think of “vital capital” as the sum of the intangible assets you need to live a healthy, productive, and enjoyable life. When these assets are well managed, upon retirement you will be healthy enough and you will have enough stamina to take full advantage of whatever financial capital you have accumulated.

Because these intangible assets fall outside of their expertise, most financial planners tend to take your health and stamina for granted. They can afford to consider this “none of their business.” Unfortunately, even most doctors and health care providers are now required to focus so singularly on illness and disease that they also can end up taking your overall health and stamina largely for granted. They no longer are afforded time to focus on “the long view.” You, however, cannot afford to overlook your health and stamina. Remember that no one else has as big a stake as you do in sustaining your own well-being.

Because of this blind spot, when we’re planning our retirements, most of us have been taught to put financial capital way out ahead of vital capital. This priority, however, amounts to a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Why? Because without adequate vitality, when you stop working you might end up being unable to enjoy the fruits of your well-earned retirement funds. Indeed, if your health should fail you before your planned retirement, you might find yourself prematurely disabled and facing an early “forced retirement,” way ahead of your reaching the security of attaining all the financial capital you had planned to amass.

Either way, once you chronically lack vitality, you will no longer be able to fully enjoy doing the very things you may have been deferring until retirement. Your “glory days” might end up being behind you, and you could be left with far less to look forward to than you ever imagined. Particularly if you lack good health, even if you were to have all the money in the world, your ability to enjoy your wealth can end up being severely constrained. Indeed, it might also be short-lived.

Financial Capital Is Not Enough

So having plenty of financial capital is, in and of itself, not enough. You also need to have a wealth of “vital capital.” This includes excellent health, great personal stamina, an agile mind capable of cogent thinking, an exuberant outlook on life, and a strong confidence in your ability to continue to make valuable contributions to the world around you, ones that are creative, generative, and fulfilling.

In what follows, I invite you to look carefully at this intangible half of the retirement equation. I encourage you to be sure to do at least as much “portfolio management” around building your future “vital capital” as you do around building your future “financial capital.”

As I mentioned earlier, the critical goal that most of us tend to overlook is our need to amass enough vital capital to ensure that we will be in a position to enjoy whatever financial capital we are amassing for ourselves. In other words, each of us needs to strike a balance between our investments in these two different types of assets: those that are tangible and those that are intangible.

If you were to come up short with one or the other, I suggest that your vital capital is, in the long run, at least as important and as valuable as your financial capital. Maybe even more so. After all, without your health, it’s hard to do just about everything. You can’t leave home for long without it.

“Vital Capital Planning”

By way of analogy, let’s apply a simple financial planning model to the task of “vital capital planning.” Think of your vital capital as something you can build up and save for the future—just as you would save money. Then let’s compartmentalize what you need to save for retirement and make a plan to deposit your intangible assets it into six different bank accounts.

Three of these accounts will be interest-bearing savings accounts in which you continuously make deposits and then let what you have saved grow and compound over time. For the most part, you will rarely make big withdrawals from these accounts. They hold investments you make now with the long term clearly in mind. You have faith that what you save now will be extremely valuable to you in the future—especially if and when you decide to retire.

The other three accounts are more akin to checking accounts. They are more suitable for holding “faster moving” assets. As with your savings accounts, you want to cultivate a habit of making regular deposits into these accounts. Because of the unpredictability of life, you also may need to make occasional—or even frequent—withdrawals. Whenever you need to spend some the vital capital you have invested in these accounts, you can do so quickly and even massively. All you have to do is write a check and cash it.

The more you save and invest in all six of these accounts, the more vital capital you will have at your disposal, and the more degrees of freedom you will have day-to-day. Your accumulated “intangible assets” will provide you with a strong foundation for living your life in a continuous state of abundant zillience. This is true right now, today. It also will be true going forward, not just when you retire, but long thereafter, as well.

Let’s differentiate the six accounts further.

The Three Savings Accounts

You can use your three savings accounts as “holding vessels” for the virtual capital that you create through the three “background generators” of zillience (Footnote 1). The first account is for deposits of the positive energy you generate each and every time you successfully make and keep an agreement. The second account is for deposits of the positive energy you generate when you take care to eat well. This is a matter of choosing to eat only nourishing foods and only in modest amounts. The third account is for deposits of positive energy that you generate by taking care to sleep well. By making it your habit to get enough quality sleep each night, you can not only keep your energy strong and steady, but you can also bank the dividends from being well-rested into this third saving account.

As you make continuous small deposits in these three savings accounts, you will start to “bank” a significant measure of vital capital.

The Three Checking Accounts

The three checking accounts hold the virtual capital that you create through your “foreground generators” of zillience (Footnote 1). These are the three developmental practices in which you make intentional small investments every single day in order to be sure that you are continuously paying yourself first.

The first checking account holds the virtual capital that comes to you by dint of having a daily centering practice. You might think of this as “mind capital.” It includes your having a well-developed ability to re-center your thoughts and emotions quickly, and a related ability to maintain your “centeredness” through thick and thin. Ironically, you develop these abilities by practicing “getting out of your mind” and spending short periods of time in a restorative place of deep inner stillness.

The second checking account holds the vital capital that flows from exercising vigorously every day or every other day. You can think of this as “body capital.” It includes great health, abundant stamina, a high degree of fitness, corresponding physical agility and flexibility, and the ability to move your body through space both powerfully and gracefully.

The third checking account holds the deposits you are able to make when you invest in a daily creative practice. You can think of this as “spiritual capital.” It includes your ability to stay connected with your own true passions, to be fully authentic, to be ceaselessly creative, to be expansive emotionally, and, all the while, to be continually at peace with just what is. It also includes having a great and reliable sense of humor.

Your Portfolio of Virtual Capital

All six of these bank accounts make up your “portfolio” of investments in your own virtual capital. The distinction between what goes into each account is likely to gradually dissolve over time. In the end, every “dollar” invested is a “dollar” you can spend. It’s yours to put to good use when you need it, regardless of when or how you earned it.

So however young or old you are today, and however far away your retirement appears to be, remember that there is more to amassing wealth than just accumulating financial capital. At least as important is having a wealth of vital capital. Amassing this latter type of capital is entirely up to you. No one else can do it for you.

Just remember that the act of developing vital capital requires clear intentions, sharp attention, and a continuous and systematic amount of effort. Alas, there are no shortcuts. On the other hand, the rewards can be immeasurable, life sustaining, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Call to Action

To start the process of building up your “vital capital,” all you have to do is open up one bank account. Which of the six accounts above appeals to you the most? What would it take to start making some daily deposits in that account? To what do you need to pay attention? What specific actions would be valuable for you to take every day? Once you start making deposits, how fast can you grow the intangible wealth in your account(s)? How will this benefit you? When will you have enough to start sharing your intangible wealth with others? What do you want to contribute? To whom? To what cause? For what heartfelt reason?

Once you have answers to these questions and start to take action accordingly, you’ll most likely find yourself moving along your own true path. You’ll be headed “homeward” in the very best sense of the word.