I would say wealth is the accumulation of things you want to the extent that you no longer need to search for more to be satisfied, whatever those things may be.

Creating wealth is a form of trading up. You may have heard of the website “One Red Paperclip”, and the Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald who traded his way from one red paper clip up to a house through a series of direct trades involving no exchange of money. Kyle took an asset that had some value to him, and found someone to whom it held more value, then made an exchange based on the same principal in reverse for something his counterpart owned. In the exchange, odd as it may sound, both parties became more wealthy. Both had more of what they wanted after they traded.

Any way it’s cut, I have found there are only two ways to define wealth: by comparing what you have to what you want, and by comparing what you have to what others have. The danger in comparing what you have to what others have is that you may perceive yourself wealthy while your compatriots do not, and if this is your measure of wealth then you are indeed quite poor. Say you owned a big bag of tulip bulbs in February 1637 – according to your neighbors you were quite wealthy. But, consider that same bag of tulips in May 1637, just three months later. If you were one of the multitude who invested your life savings in the tulip bubble, you were now poor. Very poor. The physical condition of you and your belongings had not changed at all – just the measure by which you determined your own wealth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Finally, go back to the other measure of wealth: that which you have relative to what you want. Say a man has ample supply of that which he loves, whether others value it or not, he is a wealthy man by his own measure. Surely those around him would not consider him equally wealthy by their own measures, but for the man what’s the difference? As for me, I no savings left from my last startup company, a big debt in student loans, and pretty simple belongings. Certainly not wealthy by measures of money. But I also have a wife I love, friends all over the world, skills and knowledge I’ve accumulated over 28 years, and many opportunities out in front of me to live a fun life. By my own measure, I consider myself an extremely wealthy man.

I heard a quote the other day that made me think about this idea of wealth, which I think is appropriate to end this article with: