When the billionaires startedlaunching themselves into spacelast summer, the internet was ready with jokes.

It’s another contour in the sometimes uneasy relationship people have with wealth.

That same Personal Capital study placed the figure around $400,000.

That means it takes himtwo weeks to earnjust shy of themedian annual household incomein the US.

This comes amid a broader public debate over the increasing disparity between the 1 percenters and everyone else.

Neither Musk nor Bezos responded to a request for comment.

Wealth remains a complicated topic.

The reasons people chase it – or reject it – differ.

Wealth with a purpose

John Caudwell doesn’tneedto make much more money, he said.

He’s worth about $3.1 billion already, according to Forbes.

“Nor could I aspire to do that.”

After all, promotions at a corporate job only take you so far.

But also, Caudwell sees a certain pointlessness in amassing wealth for the sake of amassing wealth.

I think there’s much better, much more satisfying objectives in life than just creating colossal wealth."

“Wealth is a means to achieve a set of goals,” she said via email.

Some clients come to her with specific goals in mind, others don’t.

Either way, she does see some impact just from the fact that the superrich are out there.

“In our consumer culture, we are indoctrinated to accumulate.

“Of course, this isn’t true, but that understanding of the world is a persistent one.

If happiness is based on consuming, it will always feel out of reach.”

When less is more

Joshua Fields Millburn learned this lesson for himself in his twenties.

He grew up poor in Dayton, Ohio.

As a kid, he thought the reason his family had problems was because they didn’t have money.

So, after high school he got a job and set his sights on climbing the corporate ladder.

Eventually he was making $200,000 a year, which goes pretty far in Ohio.

‘Why does a person need 12 suits?’

is a fine question that I never bothered to ask.”

As he tells the story, though, he was also massively in debt and very unhappy.

Rethinking success

In modern mythology, some of the uber-wealthy out there got their starts as entrepreneurs.

Every year, about 3 million students around the US takeJunior Achievementclasses at school.

For some kids, Junior Achievement might be their first exposure to the idea of starting a business.

But the point isn’t to train kids to pursue entrepreneurship for the sake of striking it rich.

Grocholski says the superrich have always kindled some awareness in kids' perceptions.

Fifteen years ago, they might have talked about Oprah Winfrey or Steve Jobs.

At the university level,Sean Branaganstarted the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University’s S.I.

Newhouse School of Public Communications.

He says he drives home with his students that the definition of success is up for interpretation.

Instead, it’s built in," he said.

Davis made Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2021.

“Success looks like achieving whatever it is that you want,” she said.

“I always want to be in a position where I’m able to create freely.

But, she says, self-sufficiency underpins her goals.

In 2019, he increased his Giving Pledge commitment to 70%.

“Why wouldn’t every wealthy person do the same thing?”

“What [do they] want all that wealth for in the long term, anyway?”