Let’s swerve those mid-financial career Blues
You’ve worked hard, and for decades; you have won great promotions and maybe a few more than decent end of year bonuses; your headline net worth is beginning to look rather impressive and maybe (don’t shout it to the world) up in seven-figure territory (putting you into a small percentile of the UK working population).
But it can start to feel that all that is more theoretical than usable. On paper, we’re getting there—yet why aren’t I feeling it?
For many senior professionals and executives, there can come a point of growing disconnect between headline net worth and lived financial reality. However, what’s really happening isn’t that you actually are not doing everything right: your issue isn’t a lack of wealth but the way it is structured.
Let’s see what’s going on here—and more importantly, what we can do to fix it.
The natural lifecycle of financial success
Especially in the City and in big US tech firms, a fair chunk of modern compensation is no longer received as straightforward cash income but delivered through deferred or conditional instruments such as restricted stock units (RSUs), performance-linked bonuses, and long-term incentive plans.
Some of this is your employer trying to be canny and extract as much value as they can, while some of it is the reality of taxation rules (which you’d have wherever you worked). For a lot of senior roles, “non-cash” (deferred shares) can make up 50% or more of the variable pay component, for example, while under Bank of England rules, a significant percentage of variable remuneration (bonuses) for “Material Risk Takers” (MRTs) in banks must be deferred, often for 3–5 years, for example.
Over time, all this kind of deferred goodness will be extremely valuable to you. But on the day-to-day, it doesn’t translate into immediate financial flexibility. RSUs are typically released in tranches, taxed at the point of vesting, and tied to the fortunes of a single employer—in other words, they represent future potential value rather than present-day liquidity.
The same is often true of pensions. While your pension pot is (or should be!) substantial, access is restricted by age and regulation, and drawing on them early is rarely efficient. By definition, they contribute to long-term security but do little to support current lifestyle decisions or perceived needs.
Property is also not a liquid asset. Often, home ownership is the largest single component of personal or couple wealth, yet it is not readily deployable capital. Unless you downsize, relocate, or release equity, the value remains locked up in that brick and mortar. It is wealth in form, but not in function.
After doing all the right things for a while, then, in terms of climbing the career ladder, looking for stock or equity opportunities, and investing in your future using the power of everyone’s friend CAGR, you can end up with a financial profile strong in aggregate but constrained in practice. It is entirely possible to be “high net worth” while still feeling dependent on that monthly salary to maintain day-to-day spending.
And it’s a feeling that, if you let it and don’t try and see the bigger picture, can often undermines the sense of financial ease.
Worst-case scenario is you end up feeling like a HENRY (High Earner, but Not Rich Yet—in the upper tiers of earnings, but with a financial profile that does not yet deliver a corresponding sense of independence.
You are never building success in a vacuum
This isn’t just some kind of a delusion or First World Problem; there are objective conditions that affect all this. Value too closely tied to a single employer rarely feels fully secure. If a large proportion of net worth is held in company stock or RSUs, then personal financial outcomes become directly linked to corporate performance. A fall in share price has an immediate impact on perceived wealth, while a change in employment can interrupt future accrual entirely.
Even when the numbers remain objectively strong, the sense of uncertainty can persist. Even the smartest companies merge, get bought, pick the wrong future pathway, all the rest of it: your Dad’s blue chip could be a forgotten name a few years later.
Taxation is a further contributing factor in mid-financial career journey stress; many high earners operate within marginal tax bands where additional income is heavily reduced once income tax, national insurance, and tapering allowances are considered. As a result, incremental increases in gross income do not always translate into meaningful increases in disposable wealth. The marginal effort required to earn more can feel disproportionate to the net benefit received.
There is also the natural cycle of payments and bonuses. When income is high through bonuses, vesting schedules, or equity events, but irregular you can feel a bit of financial inertia, accumulating assets without a clear framework for converting them into usable, flexible wealth. The result is often a nicely growing portfolio but a spread of savings that don’t feel they support long-term lifestyle objectives or financial independence in a structured way.
So, what to do: just sit and take it?
Wood for the trees, please
If that works for you, you do you–but I think a more helpful bit of HENRY help is a sense of perspective.
The first step is to distinguish clearly between liquid, accessible assets and those that are conditional or deferred. Cash savings, ISAs, and vested equity represent very different forms of financial flexibility compared with unvested shares, future bonuses, or illiquid property wealth. Treating them as all the same just needlessly obscures your true level of financial freedom available at any given time.
The second is concentration risk. As stated, senior employees in successful companies tend to accumulate a significant portion of their wealth in a single corporate equity position. While this can be a source of upside, it also introduces a level of volatility that is often underestimated. Gradual diversification is a better strategy—and is not about reducing confidence in your employer’s brand, but about ensuring that personal financial outcomes are not overly dependent on a single external factor.
Tax planning is equally important. The effective management of pensions, ISAs, and realised gains will materially improve your long-term prospects. Just as importantly, the timing of income recognition and disposals can make a big difference to net wealth retention over time.
Keeping that all-important eye on the final prize
All this can’t be one-off decisions, but part of an ongoing strategy. Finally, there is the question of purpose. Wealth becomes significantly more useful when it is aligned with clear objectives, either as a solo player or as a family. That may include defining when work becomes optional, establishing the conditions under which someone could step back from a demanding role, or simply clarifying what level of financial security is required to support a chosen lifestyle without reliance on employment income.
Without this structure, it is easy for even substantial wealth to remain abstract—visible in statements but not fully experienced in life. I think the solution to HENRY-itis is to keep reminding yourself that the objective here is not simply to accumulate assets but to convert them into financial stability that offers you genuine flexibility and control.
Thoughtful planning and ongoing advice can play an important role in turning this mid-life money angst complexity into clarity and paper wealth into something more tangible and enduring.
I can’t see how not getting that wider view now and again can’t help, so why not schedule a little bit of time with me to get out of any temporary fiscal funk?
- This blog is for information purposes and does not constitute financial advice, which should be based on your individual circumstances.
- The levels and bases of taxation, and reliefs from taxation, can change at any time. The value of any tax relief depends on individual circumstances.
- The value of investments can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable guide to future returns.
- The value of pensions and any income from them can fall as well as rise. You may not get back the full amount invested.