The Atlantic

The Reason Many Ultrarich People Aren’t Satisfied With Their Wealth

At a certain point, another million dollars doesn’t make anything newly affordable. That’s when other motivations take over.
Source: Tim Graham / Getty

As the number of millionaires and billionaires in the world climbs ever higher, there are a growing number of people who possess more money than they could ever reasonably spend on even the lushest goods.

But at a certain level of wealth, the next million isn’t going to suddenly revolutionize their lifestyle. What drives people, once they’ve reached that point, to keep pursuing more?

There are some good explanations, I found, after talking to a few people who’ve spent significant amounts of time in the presence of and/or researching the really, really rich. Michael Norton, a Harvard Business School professor who has studied the connections between happiness and wealth, had a particularly elegant model for understanding this pattern of behavior.

Norton says that research to two centraland This applies to wealth, but also to attractiveness, height, and other things that people fret about.

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