America’s consumer landscape, which prizes spending and encourages people to define themselves by what they own, only makes the financial balancing act trickier for adults, especially if they have fat wallets.

“Someone who goes broke, or someone who goes into debt, is really somebody who isn’t comfortable having their money,” Ms. Gurney says. “Yes, it appears as a lack of discipline. But the lack of discipline comes from an emotional place that causes them to be undisciplined. It’s not about the money. It’s about our emotional relationship to money.

“The people who are out there just running through money have failed because they haven’t come to terms with who they are and what they want the money to do for them,” she adds. “I see a lot of baby boomers beginning to panic because they haven’t figured this out.”

Mr. Foreman, who stared down financial collapse as an adult despite a troubled, impoverished childhood, said he knew real wealth when he saw it. “If you’re confident, you’re wealthy,” he says. “I’ve seen guys who work on a ship channel and they get to a certain point and they’re confident. You can look in their faces, they’re longshoremen, and they have this confidence about them.”

He says he can spot a longshoreman who has enough equity in his home and enough money in the bank to feel secure, and that some people, no matter how much money they have, never get there. “I’ve seen a lot of guys with millions and they don’t have any confidence,” he says. “So they’re not wealthy.”

IN the years after the Moorer fight, Mr. Foreman became much wealthier than he ever was during his boxing career. In 1999, he sold his name and his image to the manufacturer of George Foreman’s Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine for $137.5 million in cash and stock. He is now a proven pitchman on home shopping channels and the lecture circuit. He owns a fleet of cars, a watch collection, two homes and a ranch in Texas, and another home on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia — but he says he has no idea what his net worth is, and he says he does not want to know.

“When you start knowing, you’re scared,” he says. “I have lots of money, you know what I mean? But I haven’t found confidence like that longshoreman I told you about.” Nearly going bankrupt, he asserts, has permanently scarred him. “I will never feel secure again,” he says. “I’ve got to earn, earn, earn, earn.”

Respect every dollar, Mr. Foreman reiterated, respect every dollar.

“You can become complacent,” he says. “You can say, ‘I’m successful,’ which is the kiss of death. In America it’s hard to wake up hungry. It’s frightening. You can become complacent and wake up tomorrow totally homeless.”