Have You Noticed How Millionaires Lose Friends Soon after Gaining Wealth? Here Are 10 Reasons Why.
It takes the median household roughly 14.7 years to earn $1 million, according to The Economist. But how long does it take to lose a friend when you become a millionaire? We average, substantially less than 14.7 years.
So, what are the reasons that when a person becomes a millionaire, they reassess friendships and start ditching a few of their old favourites?
Let’s find out with 10 Reasons Why Millionaires Lose Their Friends.
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Instead of reading this long article, use this time to check up on your friends and switch over to the shorter video version of this text:
With that out of the way, let’s jump straight into the article.
1
Everyone Is Jealous of the Millionaire
When a person becomes a millionaire, it’s easy to think that everyone is jealous of your new-found fortune. And yes, there are probably a few people who are jealous of your money, but it doesn’t apply to everyone.
Millionaires find it rather tricky to maintain healthy relationships with their old peers, because they have this constant perception that they are jealous of their success.
At this stage, try and remember this… People are not jealous of your success, rather they’re angry at their own failures. But as us Aluxers know, we are not responsible for the thoughts of others – so you keep moving forward with your head held high.
2
The Gap between Millionaire and Nonmillionaire Becomes Too Great
Shaggy explains this gap on TikTok. The gap, as he says, grows larger as you get closer to your millionaire status – until the gap is so wide – it’s impossible to join back together. He continues to say that the only way to close the gap is to come back down, but why would you do that? Because if you come back down, you’re losing… so you’ve got to continue going upwards.
And it’s up to the people at the bottom to catch up to you and if they don’t, you’ve got to leave them behind… which bring us to our next point.
3
Millionaires Feel Uninspired by Their Friends “Lack of Motivation”
We often mention the importance of spending time with like-minded people. In our video, 15 Leadership Lessons from Tim Cook, we mention that he too believes the importance of surrounding yourself with people with similar mind-sets, especially when it comes to ethics and integrity.
When you’re making your way towards millionaire status and your friends are all just kicking back and waiting for life to happen to them, it can get very frustrating. You want to shake them into action and get them motivated so they can be as excited as you are. But it doesn’t always happen that way, and you’ll find that it can be uninspiring when you’re growing and they’re remaining stagnant.
Millionaires cut their losses and seek friends with the same drive and ambition.
4
Millionaires Feel Obligated to Always Foot the Bill and It Gets Exhausting
Have you ever come into a bit of money, and suddenly you have old friends creeping out of the woodwork? It happens all the time, and suddenly you’re paying for your mother’s uncle’s step niece’s dental work and your grade 1 bestie’s wife’s liposuction.
Jokes aside, when you’re wealthy, your friends do expect you to cover the bills when you’re out and it’s not because they’re being greedy, but they often feel like you understand their financial position and you should be happy to help them out.
However, if you continue to keep covering all the costs, you’re enabling your friends to remain “poor”. Why should they work when you’re covering the expenses?
So, of course treat your friends occasionally – but it’s not something that is healthy to maintain in the long run.
5
Millionaires Can’t Do All the Fun, Expensive Things with Their Poor Friends
So, you’ve finally got some cash to do some of the fun things you’ve been wanting to do your entire life! Taking a hot air balloon trip in Cappadocia or seeing the Northern Lights in Norway… but sadly, none of your friends can afford to go.
And while you understand that they can’t do these epic trips with you, it gets annoying when you want to go the theatre, a concert, or a comedy show – and they keep saying no.
You’ll eventually tire of them always declining your invites, and you’ll move onto others who can join you.
And while you keep doing you, waiting to meet your new travel companions, you could still spend some time planning your next epic adventure – and for that, we have the perfect video to inspire you:
6
Millionaires Work All the Time – That’s How They Got Their Millions
In order to bank those millions, millionaires spend a lot of time… working. And while they do make sure they leave some space for a good time, it takes commitment, dedication, and time to earn, earn, earn.
As CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman once said, “Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off.”
It’s challenging for millionaires to hold onto their friendships when they’re working hard and trying to become the success, they know they can be.
7
Millionaires Hold More Power than Their Poorer Friends
And that Aluxers, doesn’t work. Often millionaires lose their friends because they become more powerful the wealthier, they become.
An article in the New York Times asked, “Why do the rich have so much power,” where they focused purely on the rich and their political influence. Their response was that… “huge disparities in income and wealth translate into comparable disparities in political influence.”
Take that influence and use it in every aspect of life – and very soon – millionaires will lose their friends when they become more powerful and more connected.
8
Millionaires Get Lonely and Isolated
Because millionaires have slowly lost their friends, they often find themselves doing a lot by themselves. They fear that people are just trying to use them for their money, or have ill-intentions, so they prefer to go about life solo.
When they do meet new people, they can often forget how to be “normal” and just speak about the weather, or the global Facebook outage… or whatever else is happening… which brings us to our next point.
It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain friendships sometimes. Get an idea of why this happens by checking out 15 Reasons Why Friendships Fade Away.
9
Millionaires Can Be So Disconnected from Reality, Making It Tricky to Keep Friends
The daily struggle is real for most, but when you’re a millionaire, you’re not affected by rising electricity costs, the potential lack of fuel or stocking up on toilet paper. You know that you can get anything you need, when you need to.
That’s why we often say, money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy peace of mind.
So, when the friends of a millionaire are stressing about paying their mortgage, or how they’re going to get their children into a decent school, the millionaire just can’t grasp how these worries are even a problem.
Christopher Ryan, author of Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress, says it’s the wealth differentials – the distances in wealth between a rich person and those around them – that have the most profound effects on our subconscious – according to BBC.
We encourage you to download the book on Audible, using our free download code at alux.com/freebook.
10
Money Guilt Is Real
This is a strange conundrum, but it’s a reality that many millionaires deal with. They struggle with severe “money guilt.” Now, this can swing in two ways. One, where the millionaire goes out of their way to help others and appease their guilt, or two, the millionaire does nothing and looks like a total jerk for being so “heartless.”
Many friends are lost at this stage, because the millionaire is unable to process this guilt and it affects their relationships severely.
Seeking professional help is always a good idea if you find yourself in a similar situation.
Question:
Aluxers, why do you think millionaires lose their friends? We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s topic!
