Joseph Heller – a famous novelist – was at a party hosted by a billionaire hedge fund manager. A guest informed Heller that the hedge fund manager had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22.
Heller responded, “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.”
The power of having Enough
Most people are not like Heller. We have trouble determining when we have enough.
If we get a high-paying job, we may be excited and happy for a while. But then, at the office party, we meet people who are making more than us. So we work hard, get promoted, and make more money.
After getting promoted, we meet other people. Some of them are millionaires, so we aim to earn a million dollars. After becoming millionaires, we want to be multi-millionaires.
This cycle never ends – because no matter how much money we make, we can always make more money. We never have enough… even if we are the richest person in the world.
John Rockefeller, the wealthiest American of his time, had this insightful observation: How much money does it take to make a man happy? Just one more dollar!
If Rockefeller could not escape the allure of money, what hope do we have?
Determining when we have Enough
Money is a tool to help us lead a better life. But most of us get trapped in the game of earning money and forget to live.
The most important part of any game is to know when to stop! The same applies to the game of making money. The trick is to know when we have enough.
To determine enough for me, I kept track of all expenses for a year. You can also multiply monthly expenses by 12 to calculate yearly expenses. But expenses vary month to month. Also, some expenses are quarterly (like property taxes) or yearly (like annual memberships). So, it is better to take a yearly view.
After determining my yearly expenses, I multiplied them by 33 to determine my ‘enough’ number. Typically 25 times your yearly expense is enough to sustain your current lifestyle indefinitely, but I went with a higher number of 33.
Related article: The real cost of buying something
Think about other things
In addition to money, it is vital to have enough in other areas of life too. There are a couple of ways to do that.
Firstly, I keep reminding myself that there are many areas of my life where I already have enough: Family, Health, Home, Friends, Opportunities, Food, etc. It is easy to lose sight of all our blessings, so I keep a gratitude journal.
Secondly, things are not always what they seem. When we see someone’s fabulous Hawaii vacation pictures, we may not know that they are working in a dreadful job for the remaining 50 weeks. Or when we see someone’s fancy car, we may not realize that they are now poorer than before!
We should not compare our everyday life with the few seconds of Instagrams from someone else’s life.
It is worth remembering – The grass is always greener on the other side because it’s fertilized with bullshit!
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Excellent article. This article has influenced me in changing one of my critical decision and I am happy about it
Thank you for the great feedback. I am happy that this has been useful.
Very well written and a key message in every situation of life i.e. find out when to stop!
Thank you for the kind words!
Nice article to give an overall view of how much is “enough “.
Thank you!
Great article, thank you.
Thank you for the feedback!