The richest people you’ll meet sometimes drive beat-up cars and have friends in every town.

Wealth is easy to display and hard to verify, and the display often costs exactly the thing it is imitating. Meanwhile some people are accumulating something less visible: a long list of people glad to see them and very few needs that money would answer. The two kinds of rich do not always live in the same person.

Ask which of the two you are actually building this year. Count the people who would take your call at eleven at night. If that number is climbing while your possessions are not, you are doing well by the measure that ages better.