Someone has several million euros, no debts and enough to maintain their usual life even after losing a substantial share of their wealth. Yet they check markets more often than they would like. A bad month follows them to the dinner table. After a major downturn, they calculate how much has vanished, although their actual living standard has barely changed.
It would be easy to call this person ungrateful. Gratitude and fear do not reliably cancel each other out, though. You can recognise privilege and still worry. The more interesting question is what the worry concerns. A concrete economic danger? Lost control? Returning to earlier circumstances? A future no amount of reserves makes completely calculable?
What interests me most is the difference between substantial assets and feeling financially secure. Enough zeros on a statement often obscure it. Looking more closely is worthwhile without turning every concern into a psychological problem.
Wealth protects against much, but not uncertainty
Sufficient money covers bills, absorbs unexpected expenses and permits decisions difficult on limited income. Substantial flexibility is a genuine advantage. Fear of loss is therefore not automatically the same as fear of being unable to pay next month's rent.
Wealth may be tied mainly to a business. Its calculated value can be high while income and obligations depend on economic conditions. Family members may rely on it. Valuable assets may be difficult to sell quickly or without consequences. Monitoring risks can be reasonable in such circumstances. A wealth figure alone does not reveal how resilient the life behind it is.
It is different when someone would remain financially free after a substantial loss yet feels everything is at stake. Economic consequences and emotional weight may no longer align. That need not indicate illness. Initially, it shows only that we experience risks through more than mathematical amounts.
The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes financial well-being as combining security and freedom of choice in present and future. Absorbing financial surprises and feeling in control of finances are among the relevant factors. The Bureau explicitly notes that income or net worth alone cannot establish this well-being.
This framework serves a broad population, not a specialist model for millionaires. It still reveals a useful idea: security has both a numerical and an experienced side. Confusing them makes persistent worries among some wealthy people difficult to understand.
When a loss attracts more attention than a gain
Loss aversion is among behavioural economics' best-known explanations. In 1991, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman described decisions in which people assess possible gains and losses relative to a reference point. In their model, disadvantages often weigh more heavily than equally sized advantages.
The reference point is particularly interesting here. Someone accustomed to five million may experience a fall to four and a half million painfully, although the remainder still permits considerable freedom. What remains is not the only consideration. What previously counted as normal matters too.
We should not turn a familiar theory into a universal formula. A large 2024 meta-analysis by Brown and colleagues combined numerous empirical estimates of loss aversion and found substantial average asymmetry. A 2025 reanalysis by Yechiam and Zeif questioned the effect's robustness, particularly in certain experimental decision settings. Researchers therefore also disagree about the conditions under which loss aversion appears.
More importantly, even a reliable tendency in experimental monetary choices cannot fully explain a wealthy person's prolonged fear. A risky-choice experiment is not a psychological portrait of someone who has feared losing wealth for years. One may inform thinking about the other. It cannot replace studying it.
Why control can feel reassuring
Money creates room to act. It does not guarantee complete control of the future. A company may lose customers, economic conditions change and other people make decisions affecting your assets. Uncertainty does not automatically disappear as the sum grows.
In a 2014 study, Agata Gąsiorowska examined perceived financial control, money anxiety and subjective assessments of financial position. People believing they could control and plan finances better assessed the relationship between objective financial circumstances and subjective position differently from those feeling less control. Money anxiety also played a role.
A central qualification is that the objective wealth measures included personal and household income. This was not research specifically into multimillionaires and their net worth. Nevertheless, it suggests plausibly that feeling able to influence things can matter in evaluating money.
An odd cycle may sometimes follow. Feeling uncertain leads to seeking information. New information reveals further possible dangers. Attention moves towards what else could go wrong. Whether this exact cycle is widespread among wealthy people remains to be established. As a hypothetical process, it illustrates why extensive information need not bring peace of mind.
A small study directly among affluent people
Financial worries outside limited means can also be investigated directly among wealthy respondents. In 2025, Philip Courtenay, Richard Taffler and Ylva Baeckström published a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 19 affluent British financial-advice clients.
Researchers examined emotional expectations of advisers. The unpredictability of financial futures featured prominently. Trust and a wish to manage uncertainty mattered to participants. The authors argue that investment returns alone cannot explain the adviser relationship.
This offers an unusually direct view of wealthy people's feelings. The sample is also small and specific: financial-advice clients in Britain. Their accounts establish neither anxiety's prevalence among millionaires nor a universal affluent personality. That limitation deserves respect.
I particularly value one observation: an uncertain future can remain emotionally significant even when money is already present. Dismissing this worry would be a mistake. Constructing an epidemic of wealth anxiety from nineteen interviews would be equally wrong.
Earlier experiences may leave a longer trace
Some people come from circumstances where lacking money was not theoretical. They remember insecure incomes, overdue notices, unemployment or fear of being unable to meet an important expense. Moving up improves their situation. Memories of insecurity cannot simply be closed like an old bank account.
Life-course research suggests earlier financial hardship may be associated with later psychological distress. In a Swedish longitudinal study published in 2018, Alexander Darin-Mattsson and colleagues examined hardship at different stages and distress in older age. In their model, childhood hardship was associated with later distress, partly through further difficulties along the way.
This did not follow a group who later became rich. It therefore does not establish that earlier poverty leaves a millionaire permanently afraid of loss. It helps explain why financial biography might matter in perceiving security.
People who knew scarcity need not discard that experience because they are secure today. Equally, we should not assume hidden fear in everyone who moved upwards. Biographical traces differ. They may make people cautious without removing enjoyment of what they achieved.
Two feelings can coexist
A high balance and financial worry are not empirically incompatible simply because the terms initially sound contradictory. In a 2023 intensive longitudinal study, Angela Sorgente, Michela Zambelli and Margherita Lanz asked 158 young adults about financial well-being and stress over fourteen consecutive days. The two were related but not identical, and did not always respond similarly to the influences examined.
Young adults do not stand in for affluent older entrepreneurs. The study supports no special claim about rich people. It underlines only that financial satisfaction and financial strain should not be treated as exact opposites.
Someone can appreciate the life wealth permits and become nervous at certain developments. They can value freedom and find responsibility difficult. Even disproportionately large worries need not dominate every day.
Denying financially privileged people any right to conflicting feelings achieves little. Understanding does not require equating their circumstances with those of people lacking basic resources.
What kind of loss is feared?
Fear of losing money can mean different things. One person's greatest concern is no longer supporting family. Another fears losing a business containing years of work. A third fears losing the social position associated with wealth. Someone else cares less about a particular possession than about losing independent choice.
These are not scientifically confirmed types. They illustrate why "Why worry when you are so rich?" falls short. Threats to real responsibility, years of achievement, familiar self-image and a need for control are different.
An opaque wealth structure can also raise legitimate questions. That begins another subject: not feared loss, but the ongoing work of organising ownership and making decisions. Wealth fatigue: when wealth becomes exhausting examines that. Why you can feel rich, or not, even with millions explores how surroundings shape assessments of what is already there.
Choosing how openly to discuss your wealth can raise additional questions. That, too, deserves its own treatment rather than being a passing consequence of fear of loss.
When security has no final number
Economic risks can of course be sensibly examined and discussed. Responsibility for others should not be ignored. A search for absolute certainty can nevertheless become unattainable. No level of wealth makes every future event predictable.
The difficulty may be accepting two statements together: real uncertainties can exist while your present position is exceptionally secure. Focusing only on possible losses obscures existing room to act. Pointing only to wealth can overlook genuine obligations and personal experience.
The idea behind Tired of Wealth concerns people's unusual relationship with very substantial wealth. It assumes neither that ownership inevitably creates fear nor that a gift removes worries. Owners may keep their money however peacefully or anxiously they live with it.
I therefore have little time for claims that every worry ought to vanish at a certain number of millions. Asking about actual danger remains justified when someone has a great deal of money. Asking what the person behind the number believes they might lose is equally justified. The answer is rarely written in full on a bank statement.
Sources
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (n.d.). “Why financial well-being?”. Institutional description of financial well-being, accessed 7 November 2026. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/financial-well-being/about/
Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman (1991). “Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model”. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106(4), pp. 1039 to 1061. https://doi.org/10.2307/2937956
Brown, Alexander L., Taisuke Imai, Ferdinand M. Vieider and Colin F. Camerer (2024). “Meta-analysis of Empirical Estimates of Loss Aversion”. Journal of Economic Literature, 62(2), pp. 485 to 516. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20221698
Yechiam, Eldad, and Dana Zeif (2025). “Loss aversion is not robust: A re-meta-analysis”. Journal of Economic Psychology, 107, Article 102801. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2025.102801
Gąsiorowska, Agata (2014). “The relationship between objective and subjective wealth is moderated by financial control and mediated by money anxiety”. Journal of Economic Psychology, 43, pp. 64 to 74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2014.04.007
Courtenay, Philip, Richard J. Taffler and Ylva Baeckström (2025). “What do wealthy clients really want from their financial advisors?”. Review of Behavioral Finance, 17(4), pp. 625 to 641. https://doi.org/10.1108/RBF-01-2025-0014
Darin-Mattsson, Alexander, Ross Andel, Roger Keller Celeste and Ingemar Kåreholt (2018). “Linking financial hardship throughout the life-course with psychological distress in old age: Sensitive period, accumulation of risks, and chain of risks hypotheses”. Social Science & Medicine, 201, pp. 111 to 119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.02.012
Sorgente, Angela, Michela Zambelli and Margherita Lanz (2023). “Are Financial Well-Being and Financial Stress the Same Construct? Insights from an Intensive Longitudinal Study”. Social Indicators Research, 169, pp. 553 to 573. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03171-0