It’s been a while yall. Pam's been dealing with a few health situations over the last season, including the one year anniversary of her rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis. More on that another time.

Pockets Change held our fourth annual Hip Hop FinFest on November 7, 2025! (you can watch the replay here, with finalists between the ages of 14-19 years old. The songs were ❤️‍🔥).

This year’s theme was “When Money Makes Change,” asking students how they show up as financial advocates for themselves, their families, and their communities. As Dyalekt and I were thinking up what lessons we wanted to teach to go with the student songs, we revisited one of our favorite concepts - the four types of wealth, which are:

Financial wealth: Money and assets

Social Wealth: Relationships and community

Physical Wealth: Health & well-being

Time Wealth: Freedom to spend time as you wish

We’ve taught this concept in workshops before and I teach it to my 1-1 clients when we put together their core values statements, but as we were listening to the student songs, we saw the direct correlation each song made, to recognizing that money was not their only resource. 

Money was not their only source of wealth.

Social wealth:

The first song, by Jay the Creator, explored social wealth. The song went into the tension between feeling like he needed to be rich to get ahead vs. trust in his faith and family to support him. By the end, he was talking about taxing the rich! 

Money is transactional which makes it easy to quantify and measure. You give me this, you get that in return. Relationships are reciprocal, which means there is no keeping score, there’s no tally on how much love you receive from your family or how much care you give. 

Social wealth asks you: what non-monetary contributions do you bring to your community? What do you receive? Social wealth can feel intangible, but it lives in your body in the form of attuned relationships and a desire to show up.

Physical wealth:

The second song, by R.L. Bylay, explored physical wealth. This is not just about health, it’s also physical and emotional safety. When R.L. talked about not wanting Dolce & Gabana, just food on the table all week, how he wanted to watch his mom grow old without giving her gray hairs, and how money can tear families apart, he was asking us how much is enough? 

Physical wealth asks you: You can have more money, but at what price? 

I think about my physical wealth every day. Every time I can walk an extra mile home, twist open the toothpaste cap, pick up my child, I am reminded of the price I paid for giving into the hustle and what I’ve gained by giving it up.

Time wealth:

The third song, by KrayKay, explored time wealth. I think some of her bars sums this type of wealth up nicely:

“I hate to burst a bubble, but money is not achievable, it’s a repeat cycle”

“Good days were a blessing, bad days were still a win”

“‘Keep going’ mentality, but that’s just so they keep you”

Valuing money over time puts you on a never-ending hamster wheel. The days bleed together, the grind feels inevitable, the burnout starts to show up in your physical and social life. 

Time wealth asks you: if you let yourself imagine what a perfect day or a perfect week looks like, what would you be willing to do, change, or give up to feel that sense of freedom and lightness?

We shared with our young folks that it can be easy to fill time with ways to make money. It’s encouraged and celebrated. But no one ever talks about how to practice protecting your time - carving out space for you to just be. This is what setting boundaries actually looks like. And yes, it takes practice.

The four types of wealth in action:

One of the most recent best examples of tapping into other types of wealth to create movements is Zohran’s Mamdani’s campaign. Regardless of your politics, the reason why this mayoral race was so noteworthy was the ground game:

• 100,000 canvassers and phone banker used their time, social, and physical wealth to contribute to this campaign. Dyalekt said it felt like every 4th call he made was someone saying they were also canvassing or phone banking.

• The campaign had to make a video saying to please stop sending them money (they hit the campaign limit cap) and consider volunteering instead. 

• The only way to get official Zohran merch was to canvas. You literally could not buy it. 

• The Mamdani campaign spent their dollars on hosting soccer tournaments, city-wide scavenger hunts, and paper shredding ice cream parties. 

• The day before the primary election, Mamdani walked the length of Manhattan to shake as many people’s hands as possible. The day before the general election, Mamdani walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with hundreds of people behind him.

They ran this campaign knowing they could not outspend the opposition (with Cuomo’s final campaign spending at $55 million 💩). Instead, they tapped into other sources of wealth that gave people the ability and desire to participate in ways beyond asking them to reach into their bank accounts. It asked people to talk to their neighbors, explore the city they love, and go outside!

A little four types exercise for you:

We didn’t talk about financial wealth–one because it’s all we ever do–but also because when you ignore social, time, and physical wealth, your financial wealth suffers. When you feed the other types of wealth, your financial wealth also grows in a way that is in line with your values.

We want to ask you how you can use financial wealth to support the other three types of wealth. 

Free write or draw: Rank the 4 types of wealth (financial, social, physical, time) and list one purchase you make to support your social, physical, and time wealth. Feel free to share in the comments. 

The four types of wealth remind us that there is value in our inherent humanity. When we slow down, take care of our bodies, and take care of our people, we have enough.