Why Crazy Rich People are Often Miserable

If money can’t buy happiness, why do we spend our entire lives chasing the almighty dollar? And, why is it that people who seem to have it all are often the ones that seem so unhappy?

But that bliss often turns out to be hiding the chaos beneath—the messy divorces, the loneliness, the addictions, the things that money can’t fix. Don’t forget a few public scandals that would make Robin Leach blush.

Just watch the new Charlie Sheen documentary on Netflix if you need a refresher. It’s like a slow motion train wreck. He spent several years and countless millions on crack cocaine and hookers. Sheen has been married three times and has five children. But, that’s not even noteworthy in the land of the crazy rich and famous.

Part of the answer for their misery lies in a psychological phenomenon called hedonic adaptation. We typically return to a baseline level of happiness regardless of what we can afford to buy. It’s why that new car high only lasts about as long as the new car smell, whether it’s Kia Sportage or a Rolls Royce. Once the euphoria (and the smell) wears off it’s just a car.

Once you start flying private instead of commercial jets, I suspect that it eventually becomes the new normal. Eventually you just get used to it. Travel is still a hassle even at 500 mph.

But here’s the cruel irony: the richer you get, the richer your peer group becomes. Suddenly, your garage feels too small for your cars and other collectibles. Your 15,000 square foot home feels modest because your neighbor’s house has a car elevator, a movie theater and a putting green complex.

Making it to the top sounds exhilarating, but it’s also isolating. Billionaires can be some of the loneliest people alive, because their world is so far removed from everyone else’s. Who can you relate to when your “bad day” is having to euthanize one of your favorite polo ponies?

What happens after you’ve achieved everything you’ve been working toward since your twenties? The irony is, once you “make it,” you’ve also killed the dream. For many, it’s anticlimactic. The journey is often more meaningful than the destination, and when the journey ends, people are left restless, anxious, and—yes—miserable.

In short: crazy rich people are often miserable because wealth solves the external problems of life (bills, status, security). But it often amplifies the internal ones (meaning, purpose, relationships). Money removes friction but doesn’t stop the search for meaning.

Money doesn’t just buy things—it buys distance. Distance from financial stress, sure, but also distance from the common human experiences that bind us together. It’s partially what makes rich people feel isolated. Can crazy rich people really commiserate with you about the high cost of coffee or gasoline? When you can solve most problems by throwing money at them, you lose the shared struggle that creates genuine connection with others. I’m betting that the loss of that shared struggle can leave one feeling isolated and lonely.

Perhaps most importantly, extreme wealth can rob life of meaning. Humans need to feel useful, to believe their efforts matter. But when you can buy your way out of most challenges and hire people to handle most tasks, what’s left for you to do that feels genuinely necessary?

None of this is to say that poverty is preferable to wealth—financial stress creates real suffering. But it does suggest that our cultural obsession for accumulating wealth might be fundamentally misguided.

The research is clear: once basic needs are met, happiness comes from relationships, meaningful work, personal growth, and contribution to something larger than ourselves. I wrote about that here. These things can’t be bought, only cultivated.

We would all do well to remember that money is a tool, not a destination. The best tool in the world is useless if you don’t know what you’re trying to build with it. And the rest of us might consider that our envy of the rich is often misplaced—they’re not living the lives we imagine they are.

After all, if money could buy happiness, crazy rich people would have figured it out by now. The fact that they haven’t tells us everything we need to know about life.

Do you know any really rich people? Are they happy? I’d love to hear what you think. Leave me a message by clicking the link below. I promise that you’ll hear back from me.

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