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More Money More Problems: The 10 Challenges of the Wealthy

Everyone has money problems, yes, even the wealthy. Nobody likes to hear this though. For one, we get tired of the rich flaunting their wealth. Additionally, we think we’d be OK with some more problems if we could have more money. In general, there isn’t much sympathy for the problems of people with a lot of money.

The problems of the wealthy may not be the same type of problems that someone living paycheck to paycheck has. They don’t have to deal with a mountain of school loan debt. They can pretty much pay for healthcare costs out of pocket. But their problems exist nonetheless. Having more money doesn’t isolate a person from having more problems.

more money more problemsI don’t consider myself rich by any means. I’m not even sure how to accurately define whether someone is rich. What net worth number does a person have to reach before they are considered wealthy? $1 million? $5 million? $10 million plus?

I would consider someone with $10 million in net worth to be rich. If they had all that money in cash, they could retire and live off $200,000 a year for 50 years. That sounds rich to me.

I’ll never reach the $10 million dollar plateau. But my wife and I have come to the point in our financial lives where we are worrying less about money. While we don’t struggle with putting food on the table, I have noticed other problems creeping into our lives as our net worth has increased. It got me thinking about the money issues of the wealthy and what they might be dealing with on a personal level.

We haven’t experienced most of these. But I’ll admit a few of them shake me on a small scale.

The More Money More Problems of the Wealthy

While not exclusive to the wealthy, here are 10 problems I see creeping more into the life of someone with considerable wealth.

Dealing with the fear of losing it

Very few would ever become rich without working hard for it. It takes a lot of effort and discipline to accumulate wealth no matter who you are. The corporate executive, business owner, professional athlete or any of us need time, energy and focus to amass wealth.

But fear is no respecter of the wealthy. It doesn’t leave them alone.

When people have no wealth, they aren’t afraid to lose it. Not only until you have money does the fear of losing it kick in. After all, you’ve worked so hard to get it. God forbid you could take steps backwards, or worse yet, lose it all.

Fear is often irrational. It’s not grounded in logic. It makes no sense that you’d go back to how life was before.

But the fear of losing it all is still there. It exists. And it’s more of a problem for the wealthy because they have more money to lose.

Dealing with wanting more

More money, more problems? How about more money, more money!

This isn’t exclusive to wealthy people. I would say people of any economic status in their heart of hearts want more. We never seem to be satisfied with where we are at. We never reach the point where we can say “This is enough.”

Maybe this goes back to the first point about the fear of losing it. If the wealthy get eaten up with the fear of losing it or view the accumulation of wealth as a competition with others, then they will never think they have enough. Their driving focus becomes to create more wealth, maybe at any cost.

Dealing with the availability of goods

If you don’t have excess money reserves lying around or are still getting out of debt, certain goods are out of reach. They are not worth even considering because you have no way to pay for them. That $10,000 vacation, the kitchen remodel and new BMW look great. But there is no point in dwelling on it because you don’t have the money to pay for them.

So with wealth comes the learning curve of what you should and shouldn’t spend money on. Just because you can afford it doesn’t mean you should buy it. So the challenge the wealthy have to figure out is how to manage their desire to spend knowing that pretty much any consumer item is attainable to buy.

Related Content: How to Get out of Debt and Win in 5 Simple Steps

Dealing with access

In similar fashion to being able to purchase any consumer item would be having access to services, places and opportunities.

Wealth grants you access to places, people and services you never possibly could have had before with little or no money. That’s not necessarily bad. However, it could be if those places, services or people lead to inappropriate or addictive behaviors.

On this issue, I’m reminded of this proverb from the Bible, “The poor man is hated even by his own neighbor, but the rich has many friends.” (Prov. 14:20).

Dealing with the expectations of others

If you’ve ever seen the ESPN documentary “Broke” which describes the lives of wealthy athletes, you know this to be true. There is an expectation that the wealthy person should take care of those around them. In fact, they are often manipulated to do so and left feeling guilty and ashamed if they don’t.

Most of the time this comes from family and friends. Children expect their parents to buy them anything they want. And even businesses or organizations (like churches) could also expect the rich to bail them out with their vast wealth.

Dealing with giving too much

This dives even deeper into the last issue of expectations. The wealthy often become big givers. Sometimes this could be a detriment.

There’s nothing wrong with giving away money to help others. That is unless you are giving away too much and are giving for the wrong motives (i.e. to gain access or because others expect it or to manipulate others).

Those with wealth have to develop a giving plan so they can be intentional with giving their money. Otherwise it will have the tendency to be thrown around at whoever asks and be wasted on issues that are not important.

Related Content: How to Develop a Purposeful Plan for Giving Away Money

Dealing with a change in values

What you once believed about how to manage money may change as the wealth accumulates. For example, as you accumulate more and more money it may lesson your feelings about being thrifty and seeking out sales or the best deals on goods and services.

This could really have an impact in a marriage where one person is a natural spender and the other is a natural saver. The saver many never want to quit saving even with millions of dollars in net worth. The spender may see the net worth as a license to relax the constraints on spending. Those divergent opinions will cause conflict for sure, potentially a dissolution of the marriage.

Dealing with immaturity

In some cases of sudden wealth (like a professional athlete, lottery winner or an inheritance being received), great riches highlight one’s immaturity. If you’ve never had wealth before and suddenly it’s thrust upon you, the immature habits will likely make their way to the forefront and have to be dealt with.

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That is why, for anyone in this situation, it would be imperative to find some wise financial council. If you don’t want the more money you are bringing in to lead to more problems, find someone who is more mature and has experience handling large sums of money.

There are many highly qualified planners in the financial services industry who can guide you in how to manage money. More importantly, they can serve as a buffer between you and your money. They can keep you accountable for how you are using it.

 Related Content: 5 Warning Signs When Choosing a Financial Adviser

Dealing with the jealous and angry

It’s a shame the rich would have to deal with this issue but it’s clearly prevalent in society. There will always be people who are jealous of the wealthy and will be angry at – even hate them simply for having it.

These people think the wealthy cheated their way to the top. They stole from the poor to get to the top. Or they took advantage of a flawed system to get to the top. To the haters it doesn’t matter if the person even worked hard to get to the top. They are still evil, rich people that only care about themselves and are destroying society and the planet.

This problem works its way back around to the fear issue in this regard – the rich have to fight off the jealous and angry who are always scheming for ways to take money away from them. This can be clearly seen in the cries from politicians to tax the rich more than others and give their money to “the poor” (i.e. back to the government).

Dealing with legacy

Life on this earth comes to an end at some point, even for the wealthy. They will pass away just like anyone else. Death is inevitable.

What they do with their wealth could have quite an impact on those left behind. They could drastically change the lives and fortunes of family members, a non-profit cause or other organization if vast sums of wealth are left to them in a will.

Related Content: 8 Questions to Ask When Setting Up a Family Inheritance

Maybe even more important than what happens with the money at death is how the money is used in life. Andrew Carnegie once said, “Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.” How a wealthy individual puts money to use during their life will go a long way in determining the individual’s personal legacy.

I’ll Deal With All That

I don’t know how these problems compare with what you are going through right now. Maybe they seem less trouble than what you are experiencing. I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Heck, if I could have more money, I’d gladly deal with more problems like this. Bring it on!”

OK, maybe.

The point in all this is for us to realize that more money doesn’t solve our problems. It doesn’t matter how rich you become. The money issues will morph and change from what you are experiencing today.

Money problems never go away, so you might as well face them. Learn to identify why they are happening and take steps to help yourself deal with them. However much money you have, it’s your responsibility to use it wisely and deal with the problems that come with it.

Leave a Comment or Answer a Question Below: What other issues can you think of that the rich may encounter? Do these issues of the rich seem petty to you? Have you ever felt jealous of or angry with a rich person for having so much money? When would you consider someone to be rich? How do you deal with the fear of losing what you’ve already managed to gain?

Picket sign image courtesy of ItzaFineDay at Flickr Creative Commons

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Comments

  1. Very true, Brian. I have even seen very rich people becoming extremely frugal just to save even more.

  2. Awesome! You’re at Baby Step 7 – building wealth, great job Brian. Keep it up!

  3. My wife and I deal with remodeling and upgrading our house as a “problem”. Granted our house did need many of the upgrades that we did, but it is very easy to get caught up in it and go overboard with expensive tile or fixtures. There were a few times we had to take a step back and really assess what we were spending our money on.

    • Haha…I fall prey to that issue one as well Jon. It’s especially easy when you see fancy models (of kitchens and bathrooms for example) in magazines or on home fix it shows and want your house to look just like those.

  4. When I worked at the investment bank and made more money, I definitely faced a number of these challenges and saw my co-workers struggle with them. The biggest one for me was managing the expectations of others. My mom and mother-in-law would frequently expect us to pay for travel, food and other items because we were so “well off.” It was hard to say no and we ended up spending more money than we wanted to because of it.

  5. Paul explains it succinctly in his first letter to Timothy – the things that ‘The Rich’ have to be careful of are: acting arrogantly towards those with less, placing their hope in money, lacking in good deeds, and an unwillingness to share their wealth.

  6. Jayson @ Monster Piggy Bank says

    I agree Brian. For those people with much wealth, they’re lucky. What they only have to do I suppose is to be contented and share some positivism with others. There are always problems that we shouldn’t be so much consumed of. But they have less stress compared with others who have financial problems.

    • “…they’re lucky…” I don’t know if I’d use the term “lucky.” Maybe “fortunate” that their hard work has paid off in an extraordinary way.

  7. I forget her name but there was an american idol winner who Oprah warned when she was on her show that once she got rich and famous, relatives and “friends” would come out of the woodwork. She didn’t listen and indeed that’s what happened, and that AI winner went totally broke because she was giving all her money away to freeloaders. I think, and someone made a good point about this when I wrote my article about how sometimes I dislike rich people, that money shouldn’t change who you are at your core. If you are secure with yourself and a nice person, then you will still be the same way if you are rich. I think the spotlight is just on people with more money so when there is a big news story it’s more interesting than focusing on someone with less money. I think all in all it proves that you should learn to be happy (as long as your basic needs are met) with whatever amount you have. The rest is just the icing on the cake.

    • “…went totally broke…” Sadly this is all too common for those who gain access to wealth all of a sudden. In cases like this it would be a good idea to get some financial education, maybe from an adviser who could serve as a mentor/teacher in how to handle money wisely.

  8. These area all mindset issues. It doesn’t matter if it’s the wealthy person afraid of losing their wealth or the hater who thinks they stepped all over others to get it. When you don’t fix your mindset issues, your relationship with money is ultimately doomed because your perspective is flawed. 35% of the people who win the lottery are bankrupt in 5 years. Why? Because they never had their head on straight in the first place. Having a positive relationship with money takes work, but if you don’t take the time to fix how you really think about money way down deep, your flawed thinking will eventually rear its ugly head.

  9. I have no problems with or anger toward wealthy people, but I do lose respect for those who look down on those who aren’t wealthy or fail to understand that not all people live in the ‘world’ that they do. Many people in the 1% are caring and aware of the entire world around them, whereas others simply cannot or will not be ‘bothered’ to understand the issues that the 99% face. I lose a great deal of respect for those types of people.

    • I can understand that MB. I guess we will always have people in either socioeconomic class who have fail to understand or don’t care what others are going through.

  10. There has always been jealousy toward the wealthy, but in my 62 years I’ve never seen such an organized attempt to vilify and defame the rich. This effort is actually being led by the government in an effort to create class warfare and get support for higher taxes on the rich. Our president is constantly calling for the rich to pay their “fair share” without defining what that is, even though the IRS’s own statistics show that the wealth do pay an exorbitant percentage of the tax revenue collected in this country. No wonder the wealthy are worried about losing their money.

  11. Interesting read. I think no matter how much money you have unless you manage it properly there will always be problems. Just different type depending on which end of the money scale you are on. About 90% of managing money successfully is your mental attitude. Sticking to a plan, not allowing what other think affect you, etc.

    • “…90% of managing money successfully is your mental attitude…” I’d agree Brian. Whatever your mental attitude about money is will work its way out in your actions.

  12. Interesting article! I guess I’ve never understood why someone would be angry with someone else for having a lot of money. Jealous, sure, but angry? Unless a rich person is somehow using their wealth to try to do harm to me, I cannot see myself being angry with them for being wealthy. I usually assume that if someone has a lot of money that they’ve worked really hard for it, which I respect. I might still be jealous, though 🙂

    • “…being angry…” I just don’t see the value in it. It benefits me in no way to become upset at the rich. Heck, our country is as great as it is because so many people used their worth for good – to take risks, to build industries, to fund charities, etc. I think some simply resent the system of capitalism which naturally allows for others to rise to the top.

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