If you’re chasing the $1 million mark to feel like you’ve made it, it may be time to reconsider. Only 1 in 3 millionaires feels wealthy, according to a 2024 Northwestern Mutual study.
Luckily, feeling wealthy is less about the money in your bank account and more about your attitude toward the money you already have.
“Wealth is a relative term,” says Paul Morrone, a certified financial planner in North Haven, Connecticut. It depends upon lifestyle, your specific spending needs and your sources of income, which can differ from person to person, he says. In short, your ability to feel wealthy depends on “what your experiences and perceptions on money are.”
That’s good news because there’s a path for anyone, at any budget, to supercharge their money confidence.
Here are three strategies for feeling wealthy, from financial planners — even if you have far less than $1 million in the bank.
1. Embrace your personal financial journey
While $1 million may seem like a nice-sounding number, determining a defined and achievable savings goal is the most important step you can take to feel wealthy, says Rachel Elson, a CFP based in San Francisco, California.
“A round dollar figure is not the answer. Understanding your needs and your goals and your road map is the answer,” Elson says.
This involves letting go of a well-known number like $1 million and embracing your personal financial journey, she says. Goals such as establishing an emergency fund or improving your credit score, when reached, can help you feel wealthy without having to build a huge net worth.
That’s because individualized wealth and savings targets — when tailored to your specific goals — provide concrete ways to make your personal wins achievable. This approach refocuses your mindset on maximizing what you can do with your money, rather than how much money you can accumulate.
Simply striving to accumulate as much money as possible without a strategy can backfire by making you feel inferior to wealthier peers. “It’s like being an athlete,” Morrone says. “There’s always someone faster than you, stronger than you. There’s always going to be someone with more.”
2. Take advantage of time
When you’re in your 20s and 30s, you may not have a ton of cash on hand yet. However, you do have an extremely valuable asset: time. If you start saving early and invest consistently, time and compound interest can turn a relatively small amount of money into a considerable sum.
In other words, you don’t need $1 million in hand today to feel wealthy — just a plan to grow your money over time.
This isn’t even something you need to think about, says Elson. She recommends automating your savings process through pre-set 401(k) contributions or by setting up payroll deductions to a savings account you can’t touch.
“Anything that you can do to put a process in place and a system you don’t have to think about is going to help you,” she says.
While it may feel like there’s not much money in your budget to set aside for the future, even small contributions can have a huge impact over the long term.
“Anything you do for yourself when you’re younger is going to put you in better shape down the road,” Elson says. “The flexibility it will give you is really the most important part.”
3. Work with a financial pro
Having $1 million doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know what to do with it. However, at any income level, if you understand exactly how much you have and what your options are, you may find that your money can go further than you think.
“That’s where a financial planner comes into play,” says Elson. An advisor will generally walk you through what you have, what strategies are available to you and how things could play out over time. Together, you can determine how to best allocate your resources, she says.
The biggest value-add financial planners can provide is keeping you on track and focused on your financial goals, Morrone says. Because financial pros are generally keeping an eye on your individual strategy, you can feel confident that you have some flexibility in your budget, even if everything in your life does not go as planned.
At its core, financial planning is about how to best make your money work toward your goals, Elson says, whether it’s buying a house, saving for retirement or feeling less anxious about money. “Understanding what your specific road map is is very helpful,” she says.
Even if your goals seem far away, acknowledging small financial wins along the way can help you feel wealthy, Morrone says. These wins can be as big as improving your credit score or as small as implementing auto-pay for a monthly bill.
Celebrating these wins on your path toward bigger goals are far likelier to make you feel rich than “looking at a big number in the bank,” he says.
