Mindset
How much is really enough?
What I felt after hitting my first million, and the question underneath it.
How did I feel after hitting my first million? Honestly, I did not know what to feel. No rush of joy, no deep satisfaction. If anything, I still felt a lack. And I wondered why.
The goalpost had simply moved. A million became the next number, and then the number after that. I had been chasing more for so long that I had never once stopped to define what is enough.
As I reflected, I realised that nothing really changed in my life. Not my goals, my character, my temperament, or my desire for more. It was only when I read The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel that I began to understand my real relationship with money.
I grew up financially constrained. I once came home to no power or water. I worked my first job at 13, handing out leaflets, and kept working through my teens to support myself. In my mid-20s, I received a financial bomb. My parents were over $100,000 in debt, and my sisters and I had to find ways to resolve the situation. For most of my life, money came, and money left quickly. I could never keep it. I was always braced for the next dollar to be taken. I believed I had no agency over it.
So of course no single number would ever feel like enough. The feeling of lack did not live in my bank account. It lived in my head. A bigger balance was never going to fix this feeling I had carried since childhood.
Honestly, I still feel that pull today. The only difference is that now I am aware of it. I have come to realise that the goal was never to erase the mindset. It was to recognise it, and to factor it into how I make decisions.
So now I try to define enough on purpose. Enough to cover my needs. Enough to keep my family secure. Enough to buy back my time and to give with an open hand. Past that, each extra dollar seems to buy less and less.
The number was never the point. Awareness was.
So let me leave you with this. What are you hoping a number will finally give you?