It’s been six months since I publicly proclaimed Enough. For me, this meant not taking on any more clients for my firm. And perhaps ironically, I’ve never spent so much time thinking about the Enough concept as I have during the past half of a year.
One of the more important concepts I’ve thought a lot about was the nuance of the word itself. “Enough” means different things to different people. For some it’s a positively charged term while for others it’s a negatively charged term. (There also is a really weird undercurrent of contentment and complacency dynamic at play that I can’t fully articulate either. More – hopefully – on that at another time.)
But one thing I do know – and have been trying to articulate with clarity for a while – are the different types of Enough. I think there are three different Types:
Type 1 – Essential Enough
Type 2 – Established Enough
Type 3 – Emotional Enough
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Type 1 – The Essentials
This is the bare bones of what we actually need. For most of us – and almost certainly if you’re reading this – we already have this. These are the true needs in life, contrasted to the wants. The essentials include a roof over our head, food underneath that roof, and clothing on our backs.
The very thought of establishing and implementing Enough in your life while living in this Type is a foreign thought. In fact, “Enough” is a negatively charged term that I alluded to above.
Type 1 is really outside the scope of the Enough conversation – it’s what I realized more in this talk with my friend Justin Castelli.
The questions in this Type are more “Do we have enough to pay rent?” and “Do we have enough food in the refrigerator?” instead of “Do we have enough to retire?” and “Do we earn enough to scale back?”
The line of Enough showing this Type is relatively smooth on a graph, but it’s not really paid much attention to by anyone living within that Type because – again – the idea of Enough is a foreign thought.
A lot of people – far more than we would like to comfortably acknowledge – live within this Type. But again, if you’re reading this article there is a high chance it doesn’t include you (or me). We’re fortunate to be able to view the Enough conversation from a different paradigm.
Type 2 – The Established
The second Type of Enough is what we can Establish in our lives. It’s the spreadsheet number. It’s the result of getting clear about our goals and running Monte Carlo simulations and projections and calculations and having the discipline to stick to it. It quantifies what is Enough not just to meet Type 1 needs, but a good chunk of our wants as well. Most of financial planning concepts of Enough is centered around this Type.
The Established Enough is the amount that allows us to live a certain defined lifestyle, complete with homes and vacations and cars and education and generosity. It allows us to live a life we want to live, but recognizing there are still some restrictions in that we can’t afford everything in the world – just selected things.
This type of Enough is what I talked about in this conversation with Matt Fizell.
Similar to Type 1, on a chart the line of the Established Enough figure is relatively smooth. It may slope upward over time, but that’s just to account for increasing living expenses. It’s a controlled increase, and not the result of default lifestyle inflation creep.
Type 3 – Emotional
This was another newly discovered nuance of Enough – and what I’ve realized to be the most powerful one that requires the most attention.
The Emotional Enough is largely driven and influenced by what we see around us. It’s what we feel: content or discontent, happy or envious. It’s highly influenced by both our physical and our digital neighbors and friends. This Type is where I’ve realized we spend most of our cognitive energy by default.
It is extremely volatile. It’s both the most difficult to define and the most difficult to measure, and thus the most difficult to implement. It involves a level of awareness that is never-ending.
And it is – I believe – the primary reason why most people never experience Enough. It’s the reason I’ve questioned my own decision multiple times over the past six months.
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As I said above, Type 1 – Essential Enough – is largely outside the perspective of this conversation. It’s super important to recognize those within it and to help those who need help. It’s also a gratitude builder simply to acknowledge if we’re in a financial position to be “looking downward” at the Enough line, and not “looking upward” at it.
But where I’d like to focus on is the intersection of the other Types – Established and Emotional. And I think my own journey between these areas recently on our trip to Florida might help shine some light.
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The house we stayed in during this trip was approximately one-third the finished square footage of our house we live in at home. Our kids had a laughable (and parentally appreciative) fraction of the “things” they have at home. We had a fraction of our clothing with us.
And we loved it.
During most of our stay, we were in recognition that our Established Enough line was well above our Emotional Enough line, even if I couldn’t articulate that difference at the time.
And the result was a degree of contentment I haven’t felt for a long, long time. There was an almost daily recognition that what we had – the Established Enough figure – was truly that: Enough.
But on multiple different occasions the Emotional Enough line spiked, crashing through the Established line on its upward run.
The first time it happened was when we walked around a high end marina and saw ridiculous yachts and boats and the people enjoying them. I started calculating how much income I’d need to earn to afford something like that. And without realizing it, I started doubting the decision to stop intentionally compounding my own income’s growth. Where contentment just hours before rested comfortably, a 1-2-3 combo of envy, greed, and aspiration-masquerading-as-something-else kicked it to the curb.
However, this hi-jacking was relatively short-lived. I realized that even if I worked my absolute hardest, there was a slim chance of me ever getting to a position of purchasing that $18M yacht I saw for sale. Or even growing my income to the point of feeling confident to spend high end six figures on a different vessel.
The Emotional Enough line settled back down beneath the Established Enough line, and contentment reclaimed its place.
What was more devastating – and lasting – was a visit to friends of ours in a different area in Florida. Our friends are pretty well off, perhaps even the most financially successful people I know. While they don’t live absurdly lavish lifestyles, they do live on a higher lifestyle plane than we do. Staying with them for a few days planted some dangerous seeds in my heart.
“Don’t you want to be able to give your kids these opportunities?”
“You honestly can say you don’t desire this car? Shoot – you deserve this car!”
“Wouldn’t your wife be happier being able to afford ______? A good husband would put themselves in a financial position to get it.”
“Think of the hospitality you could provide in a space like this.”
The last question was more quickly recognized as the lie it was – as hospitality is not a natural gift of mine, and having people over to my house generally stresses me out. But those other ones (and many more like it) haunted me for a while.
And while they did, I took note that the Emotional line had spiked again – this time sustaining itself for a time period well above the Established line. And as it had before, displacing the contentment with more envy, greed, and masquerading aspiration.
It actually stayed that way until I talked with my wife about it – specifically providing more for her and the kids. She almost laughed at it, and said she had no desire for that lifestyle.
But it was alarming to me how quickly the Enough figure moved for me – and is where I thought about the distinction between Type 2 and Type 3 for the first time.
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I recognize – freely – that I spend a lot of time in self-analysis. A lot of the time it’s unhelpful, and a lot of time others can’t fully relate. However, this is an area I think we all should spend a bit of time unpacking in ourselves as we explore what Enough looks like. Which figure are we truly measuring? The Established Enough figure or the Emotional Enough figure?
Most of the information I’ve read about – and have written myself – deals with Establishing Enough. And I think it’s important to define and to implement.
But the more grueling and perpetual work lies within the third Type – Emotional Enough. None of us want to admit we’re greedy or envious or jealous. Unlike the Busyness Martyr badge, no one wants to rock a badge of envy. No one likes to admit it, but most of us are envious, at least to some degree.
I’m still figuring this out for myself, but what I’ve found that works to largely keep the Emotional Enough in check is to remind ourselves of the WHY behind our OWN Enough figures. It’s an exercise in awareness.
Just as Morgan Housel so eloquently talked about “playing your own game” from an investing stance, we also should make sure we’re playing our own game in our idea of Enough – not someone else’s game. This is infinitely easier to say than to do, especially in the age of social media where we don’t just have physical neighbors influencing us, we have thousands of digital neighbors doing the same thing.
Defining and implementing an Established Enough is a noble goal. It’s the first step. It starts with awareness, progresses towards goals, gets clarified with mathematics, and is ultimately implemented by discipline.
Defining and implementing Emotional Enough isn’t nearly as clear cut, nor is it as easily measured. Instead of just starting with awareness, it lives almost exclusively within an ongoing navigation of awareness. Awareness of how we’re feeling, awareness of what input we’re taking in, awareness of how that input is impacting our feelings.
And that level of awareness doesn’t exist solely within a spreadsheet or Monte Carlo simulator.
But it does exist. We just have to spend the time to get clear on it.
Step 1 of defining Enough a is one-time exercise, with occasional adjustments, of Establishing Enough.
Step 2 of living Enough is is the ongoing work of building awareness of our Emotional Enough. And the level of contentment it holds is restrained or enhanced by our lack or abundance of that awareness.
Just like the process of creating and maintaining a financial plan is more important than the plan itself, so too is the ongoing process of implementing Enough.
There’s some work required up front, but the real work lies in the ongoing awareness.
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Post Script – thanks to the talent over at MoneyVisuals.com for the image above.