There seems to be a cottage industry writing articles for the mainstream financial press about why affluent people are unhappy. "
A Nation of Miserable Millionaires" touts the headline of one such article from MoneyWise in December. "
Millionaires Don’t Feel Affluent" reads the section header in another MoneyWise article from last month. One I saw in my newsfeed last month but can't find by search right now asked something like "Why are there so many whiny millionaires?" in its title (perhaps it was retracted or retitled).
To the broad, general question of "Why don't millionaires feel rich?" I can tell you why. The simple answer is it's because we're not rich. ...Or at least not rich like you think we are.
Yes, I'm using first person pronouns here. I am a millionaire. But before you write me off as yet-another 1%-er complaining I'm not wealthy, understand first that millionaires are not the 1%. It's estimated that there are 24 million of us in the US. That's 9% of US adults. In high cost of living (HCOL) states like California, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Washington, DC we may not even be in the top 10%.
Being a millionaire isn't as ritzy as you might think it is. The term has been in popular use for over 100 years, and you're probably reacting to it based on connotations from 50 or 100 years ago. The writers of these mainstream financial articles sure seem to be counting on such misunderstandings as subtext. Consider these historical reference points:
- As a cultural concept, "millionaire" first appeared in regularly print in late 1800s, in the Gilded Age. The industrial titans it described, though, didn't have just one million dollars, they already had tens of millions, or more. And that's in 1890 money. In today's economy they would be billionaires. The wealthiest people today are centi-billionaires. Elon Musk has an estimated net worth of $700 billion— that's 700,000 times as much as being a millionaire.
- Millionaires as a social class were portrayed and romanticized by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby (1925). The story's protagonist, Jay Gatsby, was said to have $1.25 million in 1922. By a simple inflation calculation that's $20 million today. But the lifestyle Gatsby led in the book would not work on $20 million today. A mansion in The Hamptons, fancy cars, lavish parties, and a devil-may-care attitude? Yeah, maybe you could front that for a few years on 20 mil, but then you'd be broke. (Source: a friend's parents who own a starter home in the Hamptons and have zero fancy cars, zero household staff, and have only ever hosted two lavish parties— the wedding celebrations for two of their children.)
- The fictional character of Thurston Howell in Gilligan's Island is repeatedly described as "A Millionaire". It's right in the show's catchy theme song! But based on the wealth he's described to have in 1964 when the show premiered— owning a corporate conglomerate, extensive real estate holdings, etc.— I'd peg him at at least $100 million in 1964 dollars and at least a billionaire today. In fact he was a billionaire in 1964. It's in the script of the first episode. A radio announcer describing the accident states "Billionaire Thurston Howell III" is among the missing.
So, when you hear "millionaire" and picture someone who lives a life of ease, someone who owns a huge house, fancy cars, has lavish possessions, employs household staff, wines, dines and travels extensively, someone who does all the above without having to work, you're at least 100 years out of date. The threshold for that kind of lifestyle today is at least $50 million wealth and more likely $100+ million.
Ratchet back that lifestyle to owning an upper-middle class house,
one modest vacation home, a couple nice cars worth
merely $100,000 each, and a cleaner who comes in twice a week, and— unless you're living paycheck-to-paycheck while earning $800,000+ a year to pay it off— we're still talking probably $10 million minimum.
You can see from these examples that being a millionaire no longer buys the "millionaire" lifestyle.
That said, being a millionaire sure still beats being poor. I know, because I grew up in a family of modest means. There were times I walked to school in shoes with holes in them. However much I have today, I don't forget where I came from.
So, why are millionaires like me not feeling rich? Popular news media— the kind I started this article by referencing— offers all kinds of answers that are simple, neat, and wrong.
- Lifestyle inflation is one popular canard. As we've traded up from ordinary goods to luxuries, this argument goes, we've renormalized luxuries as basics. Trading in our starter homes for McMansions, our Toyotas for Mercedes-Benzes, and public school for our kids for tony private academies, we've forgotten that plenty of people live fulfilling lives with 3bdr/2ba houses, Toyota Camrys, and kids attending Lincoln High. In actual fact many US millionaires in 2025 still lived in middle-class homes, drove cars like a 5-year-old Toyota Camry, and earned State College degrees. My family's two cars are 7 and 14 years old, and we live in a townhouse.
- Social media comparison is another frequently cited ill. We're all so obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses— which sometimes means keeping up with the curated, fake image they portray on social media— that we see ourselves as poor in comparison. It's true that some people fall into this trap, particularly younger people who've never had to leave their socioeconomic bubble, but it's far from all of us. Especially those of us who've worked hard, saved aggressively, and invested carefully for decades to raise ourselves up a few levels on the wealth and income scale.
- Inability to stop counting our wealth is a fanciful hypothesis I encountered just recently. All I can say about this one is the author seems to have watched a cartoon of Scrooge McDuck hunched over his desk obsessively counting his gold coins and thought, "Yes! That's what real-life millionaires must be like!"
One thing none,
none, of these authors appear to have done is
ask an actual millionaire, "Why aren't you happy?" Instead they pile on stereotypes and class warfare notions. So let me, a real-life millionaire, tell you what I think worries us plain, old millionaires in 2026. It's one word:
Security.
I don't mean
physical security, like living in a mansion behind wrought iron fences with a team of attack dogs I can sic on intruders by calling out, "Smithers!
Release the hounds." No, that's
billionaire lifestyle. Montgomery J. Burns in
The Simpsons is a billionaire. The fabulously wealthy people today who are building extensive underground bunkers in their compounds? They're
billionaires. Even
centi-billionaires. (Mark Zuckerberg has estimated net worth of $250 billion, Elon Musk upwards of $700 billion.)
We
mere millionaires are not worried about riding out the zombie apocalypse in style. We're worried, simply, "
What if our wealth runs out?" Especially in the US that's a grim and all-too-real prospect. And it does
not require lavish living! Putting a few kids through four-year college can chew up a fair fraction of a million. Then there's medical bills. The prospect of
getting sick in the US, especially getting sick with a debilitating disease, is scary. Plenty of survivable conditions can chew up over $100,000 a year to survive. And a portfolio of $1 million doesn't go far in retirement, even if you don't get sick and face crushing medical expenses. Heck, just being really old and needing a managed care home can cost $100,000 a year— for something that doesn't look and feel like the setting from a horror movie. One of my grandparents faced that situation in her 90s, and it drained most of her life savings, including all the money from selling the house in outside Washington, D.C. she lived in for 50+ years, in 4 years.
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