The Psychology of Wealth and its Impact on Retirement and Inheritance

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This chapter examines the psychological challenges faced by wealthy individuals in regards to retirement and inheritance. It discusses the impact of wealth accumulation on their ability to let go of stress, the dilemma of leaving money for their children, and the exceptions to the belief that inheritance dampens ambition.

Measuring wealth is easy. You just count it up. Measuring some of the downsides of wealth is so much harder and more nuanced. They can be so nuanced and hard to measure that many people won’t even believe they exist. A downside to wealth? How could that possibly be?

Let me propose that the absurdity of talking about the downside of wealth is part of why wealth doesn’t tend to make people as happy as they thought it would.

When the benefits of money are so obvious but the downsides are so subtle, the downsides you didn’t anticipate can be more jarring than the benefits you expected.

I want more money, of course. Almost everyone does, albeit for different reasons.

This is not an anti-wealth list -- just a collection of subtle downsides that are easy to ignore, and so common you may as well call them the only true laws of getting rich.