Money has many ironies, and here is an important one: wealth is what you do not see. On spotting a Ferrari driving around, (7) _______. In reality, however, many drivers of expensive cars turn out to be only mediocre successes who spend a huge percentage of their paycheck on a vehicle. Someone driving a hundred-thousand-dollar car might indeed be wealthy. Yet the only firm data point you have about their wealth is that they have a hundred thousand dollars less than they did before they bought the car or a hundred thousand dollars more in debt. (8) _______.

We tend to judge wealth by what we see (9) _______. We cannot peer into people's bank accounts or brokerage statements, so we rely on outward appearances to gauge financial success: cars, houses, photographs on social media. Modern capitalism has turned helping people fake it until they make it into a cherished industry. (10) _______. Wealth hides in the nice car not purchased, the diamonds left in the shop and the first-class upgrade declined. Wealth is the financial assets that have not yet been converted into the stuff you see.

Hence, we should be careful (11) _______. It is more than mere semantics; not knowing the difference is the source of countless poor money decisions.

(Adapted from Psychology of Money)