What You’re Really Worried About When You’re Worried About Money
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his new podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.
Money is one of the things Americans worry about most in the world. Even in 2018, when the economy was expanding, a survey by the life-insurance company Northwestern Mutual found that more than half of Americans felt anxious or insecure about money sometimes, often, or all the time. And during the pandemic, another survey found that workers were almost five times more likely to worry about money than their health.
That’s not to say that so many of to 2020 data from the U.S. Census Bureau—live in poverty. And yet, according to a 2015 fielded by the financial-management firm UBS, more than half of Millennials with a net worth greater than $1 million feared losing their wealth “a great deal” or “somewhat,” as did more than a third of similarly wealthy Baby Boomers.
