Remember Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy on SNL? One of my favorites was...
"I hope that when I die, people think back on me and say, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'"
On some level, my goal is to die broke. The hard part is the timing. But one book that did a lot to fix my negative attitudes toward acquiring money was this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Live-Rich-Die-Broke-Seven-part/dp/1594860165He said that many of his clients were miserable because they lived broke and another large part were miserable because they died rich.
Obviously, the problem is that most of those people with under GBP 5000 were probably broke for years before finally dying, which is sad and unpleasant.
In any case, I wonder what it is in the US. Unlike the UK, we have NOT seen "declining wealth inequality and the rise of the middle class," but rather the decline of the middle class and the rise of extreme income inequality. I have to believe most Americans die broke.
One friend of mine was a WWII vet and had a full career as a professor at a tiny college with, apparently, a tiny pension and if not for VA care at the end of his life, he would have been utterly destitute, possibly homeless. By all appearances, though, he would have been part of the 1950s to 1980s professional class.