Worrying about money is normal - even when you don't need to
It's the middle of summer holiday season. You've booked the flights, sorted the travel insurance, printed the boarding passes just in case you can’t find them on your phone. And yet you’re still worried about whether the taxi will pick you up in time, or whether you’ve packed enough jumpers in case it gets cold (it won’t).
Being prepared doesn't switch off the worry. If anything, it just gives the worry more specific things to focus on.
Money works exactly the same way
We talk to many clients who are, by any sensible measure, completely financially comfortable. Mortgage paid off, decent pension, savings in the bank. And yet they still worry about money - about whether they've got enough, whether the market's about to take a turn, whether they can afford to gift money to their loved ones.
If this sounds familiar, don’t worry, you're not being irrational - you're being human.
And there are many explanations for this. One is a well-documented psychological quirk known as loss aversion. Behavioural economists have found that the psychological pain of losing something is about twice as powerful as the joy of gaining the equivalent amount - for example losing £100 hurts roughly twice as much as winning £100 feels good. So naturally, having worked hard and built up a good nest egg, the idea of losing that is very real.
There's also ‘lifestyle creep’: imagine explaining your current salary to your 15-year-old self, doing a paper round for pocket money. It would sound like an unimaginable fortune. But gradually your expectations have grown right alongside your income - your holidays have got more comfortable, your car has got newer, the takeaway has become a weekly habit rather than a treat. What felt like riches at 15 don’t feel like enough now, because your own idea of ‘enough’ has subtly moved with you.
Finally there’s the ‘comparison trap.’ We don't just measure our money against our own life - we measure it against the person next door, a colleague, or a friend, even if we do this unconsciously. This is often enough to make ‘comfortable’ feel like ‘nothing special’ or even ‘behind’.
Money worry doesn't stop when the numbers get bigger
Jarvis Cocker once said he imagined becoming a pop star would be like entering "a magical kingdom in the clouds". When it finally happened, the reality was rather more ordinary. Financial security can be a little like that. We imagine reaching a point where the worrying stops, only to discover that the questions have simply changed.
Take Elon Musk – if having enough money cured all worries he’d be the most relaxed man on the planet. He became the world's first trillionaire this summer – and by all accounts, he's still chasing the next deal, the next rocket, the next acquisition. Wealth on that scale clearly doesn't come with an off-switch for wanting more, or for worrying about what happens to it.
There's an old Chinese proverb that sums up the whole arc rather neatly: "Wealth doesn't pass three generations." The first generation builds the fortune, the second grows up watching that graft and mostly just maintains it, and the third - having never known anything else - is the one who ends up spending it. The West has landed on much the same wisdom, just with less poetry: "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”. Studies, such as a well-known 20-year survey by The Williams Group, back this up, finding that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and 90% lose it by the third.
No wonder money worries remain intact no matter what the scenario – they follow you whether you're building it, holding onto it, or trying to work out how to pass it on.
This is where we come in
We can't switch off the worrying instinct - nobody can. If you're financially comfortable and still find yourself lying awake over it, you might also feel a flicker of guilt - there are people genuinely struggling with the cost of living, so what right do you have to worry? But your worry not disappearing doesn't help anyone else's situation either. It's alright to worry, even when things are, on paper, fine.
What we can do is make the unknown a bit more known. Cashflow modelling turns "Will I be alright?" into an actual picture - numbers, timelines, real scenarios you can look at rather than lie awake imagining. It doesn't make the worry vanish, but it gives it something solid to land on, rather than nothing at all.
Think of us as the ones who double-check the itinerary before the holiday - not because you might have forgotten something, but because it's easier to relax knowing someone’s looking after all this for you.
If money's on your mind, even if things are going well, give us a call.
Please note: The value of investments can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you originally invested. Past performance is not a guide to future returns.
The information in this blog was correct as of 16 July 2026. The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate Cashflow Modelling