The Downside to Becoming Wealthy: Is It Worth It?

A lot of people seem stuck on one idea: pile up as much money as possible while doing as little as possible to earn it. That instinct shows up in odd places, including politics. Some voters fear socialism specifically because it has a reputation for dragging people down to a lower standard of living than they're used to. Setting the politics aside, the question I want to look at here is a personal one. Is chasing a big income actually worth the stress and anxiety that so many of us pour into it?

Success costs something. That part isn't a secret. Before you can earn money you usually have to put money in first, and every investment carries some amount of risk. Think about a student wondering whether the right job will even exist after graduation, or whether those years and all that tuition will pay off at all. Start a business and the risk is just as real: the doors can close, and bankruptcy paperwork can follow.

Here's the trade people don't picture when they watch late-night commercials promising riches from a few part-time hours a week. In reality, holding onto a higher income tends to mean working more, not less. The hours stretch. So does your tax situation. A bigger paycheck can push you into a higher bracket, which means tracking more write-offs just to keep what you earn. And budgeting mistakes get expensive fast once the numbers are large; one slip can turn into a serious setback.

There's a social cost too. Money buys you plenty of friends. Once word gets around that your wallet is full, company is easy to find. The catch is that you rarely learn who actually cares about you until the money disappears. People who have lost a fortune often say that's exactly the moment they figured out what mattered to them.

None of this means wealth is all shadow. It buys freedom, which is probably the first thing anyone notices. Freedom isn't free either, though. The stress that rides along with money tends to send people on vacations more often just to escape it. If you can keep your spending below your income and stay out of debt, you can stash away a reserve for the disasters that show up uninvited: a layoff, a surgery, whatever comes. Most people never manage it, because they finance everything in sight, from the car to the house. Living within your means cuts against something in human nature, but the people who pull it off shed a surprising amount of stress.

Giving feels good, and that's another real perk of having money. You can put it toward helping people who need it. That matters especially when you can't give your time, which is often the case if work eats most of your week. The charitable deduction is a nice bonus on top of it.

This is where a personal growth plan earns its keep. Working through one, you start to understand who you are, what you actually want, and why you make the choices you make. Carry that clarity into your business decisions and you can size up the risk clearly before you jump. Dave Ramsey has pointed out that someone earning $34,000 a year, roughly the U.S. median, sits in the top 1% of earners worldwide. That same figure is the poverty line for a household of six: two parents and four kids. The line itself is drawn at what a person genuinely needs to stay alive.

Managing money well does about as much for you as making more of it. Someone earning close to minimum wage who pays cash and knows how to fix his own things can end up with more in the bank than someone pulling down six figures on credit. Some of the most satisfying work pays the least, too: nonprofit jobs, public-sector roles, the manual trades that have existed as long as people have. Those workers are usually building a life, not just funding one. And once in a while, growth just means learning to live on less so you have the hours free to do something useful for the people around you.

- Erwin Wooten