A few months ago, I met a gentleman — let’s call him Mr. A — a 62-year-old who had recently sold his business. A clean exit. Good valuation. Enough money to last comfortably for the next three decades. On paper, the perfect retirement.
And yet, he wasn’t sleeping.
“I don’t know why I feel this way,” he told me. “I should be relaxed. I should feel free. Instead, I feel… lost.”
This is far more common than we admit.
The identity crisis: Wealth vs. creation
Mr A’s problem wasn’t money. It was meaning, identity, and the sudden collapse of structure. For 35 years, his financial life had been connected to his business. His sense of relevance came from activity, not from his corpus. His confidence came from his ability to create wealth, not from the wealth itself.
When you remove that engine, the fuel feels useless.
People assume money solves everything after 60. It doesn’t. In fact, it sometimes amplifies anxiety.
“What if I make a wrong decision now?”
“What if the markets turn?”
“What if I’m too conservative?”
“What if I don’t stay relevant?”
So, Mr. A started doing what many do — tuning into every financial headline, every expert view, every WhatsApp forward. And like many others, he got more confused, not less.
The breakthrough: Defining the destination
The breakthrough for him came from a simple question:
“What kind of life do you want this money to support?”
Not: How much return do you want?
Not: Which asset class do you prefer?
But: What do you want your days to look like?
He said, “I want to travel, spend time with my grandchildren, maybe teach somewhere part-time.”
That one answer changed everything. His portfolio didn’t need aggression. It needed stability. He didn’t need a thrilling strategy.
He needed a boring, reliable one. Once that alignment was done, the anxiety faded. Not because his money changed, but because his relationship with money changed.
There’s a lesson here.
After 60, the real financial risk isn’t the market.
It’s confusion, fear, and lack of purpose.
Money can only cooperate when you know what you want from life.
Otherwise it becomes like a powerful car with no map — impressive, but directionless.
Mr. A didn’t need more wealth.
He needed clarity.
And once he found that, the wealth he already had started feeling like enough.
In the debut edition of the series, we explored the crucial shifts every 50-plus individual needs for greater peace of mind. In the second part of the series, we turned our focus to ‘inner fitness’, and how it could be a game changer. In the third edition, we found how the ‘quiet middle’ can unravel a new, more intentional chapter of life.
In the fourth installment, we decoded why money after 50 is no longer about accumulation but peace. The fifth edition talked about quiet loneliness that emerges around 50. The current part of Live to 100 deals with money anxiety after 60.
Sanjay Mehta is a digital entrepreneur, investor, board advisor, and public speaker. He is the founder of Ananta Quest and co-founded Social Wavelength, which became one of India’s leading social media agencies and was later acquired by WPP to become Mirum India.
