Imagine sitting at a dinner table with your close friends. The conversation turns to the future, and you honestly say, I want to build a business that makes a lot of money so I can buy a big house and leave a large inheritance for my kids.
Instead of cheering you on, the room gets quiet. Someone tilts their head and says, But you already have a good job. Shouldn’t you just be happy with what you have? Money can’t buy happiness, you know.
It is confusing: from a young age, we are told to study hard, work hard, and become successful. But if you actually say out loud, I want to be rich, or I want to leave a lot of money for my kids, people often judge you.
There is a hidden guilt that comes with wanting to make a lot of money. Let’s look at why society makes us feel bad for wanting wealth, and how to find a healthy balance.
About the author: Ajay Pruthi is a fee-only SEBI-registered investment advisor. He can be contacted via his website plnr.in. Ajay is part of the freefincal list of fee-only advisors and fee-only India.
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1. Why People Think Wanting Money is Bad
A lot of this guilt comes from an old way of thinking. Hundreds of years ago, wealth was just land and gold. If a king took more land, the farmers had less. This made people believe that if you get rich, you must be taking money away from someone else.
Even today, many people still secretly think this way. When you say you want to build big wealth, they feel like you are taking a bigger piece of a small pie. But today, wealth can be created by new ideas and businesses; it is not just taken from others.
2. The Fear of Leaving Friends Behind
Sometimes, the guilt comes from caring about the people around you. As your bank balance grows, your lifestyle changes. You might feel bad that you can easily afford a nice vacation or a big home, while your childhood friends or relatives are struggling to pay their rent.
This creates a kind of survivor’s guilt. Many people end up hiding their success, feeling ashamed of it, or downplaying their goals just so they don’t make their loved ones feel uncomfortable.
3. The Trap of Knowing When to Stop
The idea of knowing how much is enough is actually a good thing at its core. It stops you from buying things you don’t need just to impress people you don’t like.
But society often uses the word enough to make you feel bad for having big goals. When someone asks, Why do you need all that money? they are often just projecting their own fears about money onto you.
Enough means something different to everyone. For one person, enough is just paying the monthly grocery bills. For another person, enough is making sure their grandkids can start a business without taking a bank loan. Neither goal is wrong or bad.
4. Mixing Up Greed with Ambition
Society often confuses being greedy with being ambitious. Greed is a negative trait—it means you are selfish and want to take things away from other people to make yourself richer.
Ambition is completely different. Ambition means you want to build something new, work hard, and create a better life for yourself and your family. Wanting a safe, wealthy future is ambition, not greed. You are allowed to want a better life without society making you feel like a bad person.
5. Why Leaving Money for Your Kids is Okay
People often judge parents who want to leave a lot of money to their children. Critics say that giving kids money will make them lazy, spoiled, and stop them from learning how to work hard.
But this is not the whole truth. We live in a world where everything is getting much more expensive—education, houses, and medical care. Building wealth for your kids is not about buying them fancy sports cars. It is about keeping them safe.
- The Gift of Choice: Money gives your kids the freedom to choose a career they actually love, instead of taking a terrible job just to pay off education loans.
- A Safety Net: It makes sure a sudden hospital bill won’t ruin their lives.
- Taking Chances: It allows them to try starting a business or taking a risk, which is hard to do if you have zero savings.
A parent’s goal is to give their kids a better starting line in life, not to make them struggle the exact same way they did.
6. Finding a Healthy Balance
So, how do we balance wanting to make money without letting it turn us into greedy people?
The answer is to see money as a tool. Money just makes you more of who you already are. If you are a kind and helpful person, having a lot of money lets you help more people on a bigger scale.
You can work hard to become wealthy and give your family a great life. Just make sure you set rules for yourself so you do not ruin your health, your honesty, or your family relationships in the process.
You do not need to say sorry for wanting to build wealth. You just need to make sure you control the money, not the other way around.
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Dr M. Pattabiraman (PhD) is the founder, managing editor and primary author of freefincal. He is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He has over 14 years of experience publishing news analysis, research and financial product development.
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