Why There Is Absolutely No Shame in Dying a Millionaire

Earn & Invest Episode 751: Ten Things About Dying a Millionaire

If you spend enough time in the personal finance space, you’ll eventually bump into a pervasive modern ethos: Die with Zero.

The argument goes that if you die with money left in the bank, you’ve essentially wasted precious life energy working for dollars you never got to enjoy. Lately, I’ve noticed this philosophy creating a profound sense of anxiety and even guilt among early retirees when they realize they’ve accumulated far more money than they could ever realistically spend.

Inspired by my recent post, Escape Velocity, I wanted to dedicate a solo “10 Things” episode to pushing back on this narrative. Let me be clear: There is absolutely no shame in dying a millionaire. In fact, for many of us, it’s the most natural outcome of a well-planned life.

Here is why you need to let go of the guilt of over-accumulating, broken down into ten things you should keep in mind.

Things 1 & 2: You will likely die a millionaire (and that’s a fantastic outcome)

If you are dedicated enough to your finances to listen to personal finance podcasts or read this newsletter, you are probably going to die a millionaire. Why? Because we are planners. We stack conservative assumption on top of conservative assumption. We model for historically low market returns, historically high inflation, and worst-case scenarios.

When you build a plan designed to survive the apocalypse, you will inevitably overshoot your actual financial needs in normal times. And you know what? Leaving wealth behind for your children or to causes you care about is a beautiful, fantastic outcome. It is not a failure.

Things 3 & 4: Saving money often brings more happiness than spending it

The personal finance world constantly insists that spending money on experiences is the ultimate key to joy. I’m going to push back on that.

While experiences are wonderful, those memories are fleeting and the immediate high fades quickly. Conversely, watching your savings grow provides a deep, structural, and lasting sense of safety. It significantly reduces your daily life anxiety. That underlying peace genuinely increases your baseline happiness in a way that a two-week vacation to Europe simply cannot.

Thing 5: Dying rich does not mean you didn’t spend

There is a massive misconception that if you die with millions, you must have lived a life of deprivation. It ignores the absolute magic of compound interest.

Wealthy retirees often spend far more in retirement than they ever did during their accumulation phase. It’s just that once a portfolio reaches a certain critical mass, its growth simply outpaces their increased lifestyle spending. You can live large and still die rich.

Things 6 & 7: Accumulation is really about “Escape Velocity”

People rarely save massive portfolios just to fund their baseline retirement needs. What we are really saving for is Escape Velocity.

We save to reach a specific, psychological number that gives us the courage to finally walk into our boss’s office and leave a job we dislike. This “escape velocity” number is almost always vastly higher than what the math dictates we actually need to survive. Because we are buying courage, we guarantee that we will drastically overshoot our financial needs.

Thing 8: Give your money away now

Since most diligent savers will overshoot, my advice is to start giving your money away now. Give it to your children in their 20s and 30s when they are trying to buy a house, start a family, or pay off education debt. That is when the money is transformative. Waiting until you pass away, when they are already established in their 60s, misses the window of maximum impact.

Thing 9: Long-term care likely won’t bankrupt you

The bogeyman of retirement planning is the nursing home. We are terrified of end-of-life medical costs wiping us out.

However, the data tells a different story. Roughly 86% of people will spend $100,000 or less out-of-pocket on long-term care. Yes, it’s an expense, but if you have over-accumulated millions, this will not derail your financial legacy or bankrupt your family.

Thing 10: Happy people think about money less

The ultimate benefit of dying with millions isn’t the number on the balance sheet; it is the fact that you get to spend your final decades completely free of financial anxiety. Having excess money means you simply stop worrying about it. You get to focus entirely on purpose, identity, and connections—which is a massive boost to your overall mental health and longevity.

A Word from the Community: Letting Go of the Sunk Cost Fallacy

To wrap up, I want to share a message I received from a listener named Lee.

Lee recently retired early and immediately felt immense anxiety. He realized he had worked too long and saved far too much, leaving him stressed about how he was ever going to “spend it all down” to align with the Die with Zero philosophy. He was trying to force himself to spend money on lavish experiences that weren’t actually bringing him joy.

Lee wisely realized he was suffering from the sunk cost fallacy. Just because you traded years of your life to build a massive pile of money doesn’t mean you are obligated to exhaustively spend it to validate the effort. Lee decided to stop forcing it.

I want to applaud Lee for this realization. I want to remind you all of the same thing: Your “escape velocity” number is never objectively too high or too low. It is simply the exact number you personally needed to feel safe enough to change your life for the better.

If that number leaves you with millions in the bank at the end of your life, take a deep breath, smile, and consider it a job well done.