Quick answer
Money gained the wrong way cannot buy the thing you will actually need, and righteousness reaches where wealth cannot. The proverb weighs two kinds of security against each other at the point where all security is tested.
Read both lines
The first line grants the premise everyone assumes: wicked treasure is still treasure. It spends. It builds houses and buys allies. Then the line takes the measure that matters: it "profits nothing," because the proverb is measuring at the far edge, where the second line says death is waiting. At that edge, treasure is exposed as the wrong currency entirely.
The second line sets righteousness against it, and the claim is not that righteous people never die. Proverbs was written by people who buried their righteous dead. The claim is about what holds and what evaporates when the reckoning comes. Ill-gotten wealth abandons its owner at the door; righteousness walks through it. Solomon repeats this saying almost word for word at 11:4, where "riches" in general "do not profit in the day of wrath." The pattern is one the sages kept underlining: build your security out of the material that survives the test.
From this side of the cross
Proverbs commends righteousness as the security that holds when wealth cannot; that is the proverb's own claim, and it stands on its own feet. The gospel then makes a greater announcement in the same direction: the righteousness that finally delivers from death is received as a gift in Christ (Romans 5:17). First hear what Solomon said; then hear how far God took it.
Related: Proverbs 11:4 · Proverbs 11:28
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.