How Much is Enough?

"How much is enough?”

It’s one of the most common questions in finance. But underneath the spreadsheets and calculators, it’s a deeper human question: When can I stop? When do I have enough to live, to breathe, to be free?

I’ve wrestled with this question myself. I once tried to stop working altogether. I hit a number I thought was “enough,” and I checked out. It didn’t quite work. Coming back to work, I realised enough isn’t just about capital. It’s about meaning, conversation, comparison, ambition, patience, and practice. It’s a wrestle, and one that doesn’t end.

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Buffers vs. Enough

A buffer is not enough.

A buffer is what gets you off the treadmill of hand-to-mouth living. It’s the first breath. The early noise absorber. A one-month cushion, then three to six months of expenses tucked away. That’s not financial freedom, but it gives you space to look up, to stop panicking every time something goes wrong.

But “enough” goes beyond the buffer. Enough comes when capital itself starts carrying the load. My friend Richard Fleuriot talks about “chocolate transitions”: the moment when your money shifts from being a silent passenger to becoming part of the household. At first, you’re the only breadwinner. Then gradually, capital chips in. One times annual spending. Ten times. At some point, the money becomes the primary caregiver, and you can start asking different questions. Questions about meaning, not survival.

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Comparison: Tool and Trap

We can’t escape comparison. Our minds work through frameworks. Benchmarks, scoreboards, neighbours. They all give us orientation. Even investing is a team sport.

Comparison has value. It motivates, keeps us honest, and holds us accountable. That’s why we measure against benchmarks. But it’s also dangerous. We see only thin slices of other people’s stories. The car, the promotion, the holiday snaps. Rarely the anxiety, trade-offs, or debts that came with them. Even our own stories are incomplete, stitched together from selective memory.

So the task isn’t to kill comparison. It’s to use it lightly. Like price: a blunt signal, not a definition of value. Benchmarks are conversational tools, not existential truths.

I often think of the story of Alexander the Great and the yogi on a rock. Alexander represents drive, ambition, competitiveness. The yogi represents pause, detachment, perspective. Both are true. Both are necessary. Enough lives in the wrestle between them.

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Ambition vs. Contentment

Ambition pulls us forward. It’s the heartbeat of progress, the engine of meritocracy. Without it, nothing compounds. But ambition without awareness becomes a whip, not a compass.

That’s where Wu-Wei comes in. The Taoist idea of “action through inaction.” To Western ears, it sounds like giving up. But it’s not. It’s starting from where you are, acting out of reality rather than illusion. It’s detachment not from life, but from ego.

Enough sits right here, in the tension between striving and letting go. It isn’t contentment without ambition. It’s ambition with awareness. It’s recognising the drive matters, but so does the breath. Enough isn’t a number or a destination. It’s a conversation, an evolving relationship with yourself and your money.

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The Danger of Binary Thinking

One of the biggest mistakes is to see “enough” as binary: working vs. retired, striving vs. done. Life isn’t that neat.

A salary is more than a paycheck. It’s structure, rhythm, culture. It’s the scaffolding of life. Walking away from that can feel liberating, but it also starts the clock. Suddenly you’re counting sustainability. Will this last? What happens if something big comes along?

I’ve lived that anxiety. Fertility treatments, living abroad, unexpected costs, weddings. They don’t check whether your spreadsheet says “enough.” They just arrive. And you rarely want to say no.

On the other side, too much creates its own unease. Universal basic income debates often raise the “Malibu surfer problem”: will people just give up? I don’t think so. Work is more than money. It’s purpose, contribution, connection. Capital doesn’t remove the need to act; it just changes the filter.

The truth is, there is no upper bound. You’ll never dig your five holes and be told you’re done. There will always be another hole, another benchmark, another sense of falling short. That’s not failure. It’s being human.

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Practice, Not Perfection

All advice is autobiographical. I don’t have this sorted. I wrestle with it daily. And that’s the point. Enough is not a finish line. It’s a practice.

Tim Minchin talks about “micro-ambitions”. Small, achievable goals that add up. That’s how enough works. Milestones, not miracles. Patience, not shortcuts. Patience is undervalued. You won’t settle this in a year. You’ll wrestle with it for life. And that’s okay.

That’s why conversation matters. Even if you’re technically skilled, you need someone else in the room. Another set of eyes. Another perspective. Life is like theatre: the play is never the same twice, and every seat shows a different angle. We’re built in conversation, and money is no exception.

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Get Your Money a Job

If I have one mantra, it’s this: get your money a job.

The moment you separate yourself from your money, it stops controlling you and starts working for you. Your money becomes a colleague, a partner, a caregiver. That’s when the filter shifts. That’s when the questions you can ask yourself change. From survival to meaning.

Enough is not an answer. It’s a conversation. It’s practice. It’s a daily wrestle with ambition and contentment, comparison and detachment, scarcity and abundance.

And the fact that you’re asking the question at all is proof that you’re already on the path.

Enough to go Around

If you tie your identity and incentives to your job and pay, the stress and shocks of money will drive your anxiety. Hunter-Gatherers may have also lived hand-to-mouth, but that is a false analogy because they were living off the land (a form of capital which produced opportunity). They had the option of moving in tough times. We live in containers which restrict our movement (countries, job qualifications) and do not all have the option of a menu of skills which provide almost certain payback if mastered (hunting and gathering). 

Modern hand-to-mouth living means spending all you earn, without the option of earning more if that is not enough. When there is more than enough, simply consuming it. Adjusting spending up if income rises. The trick is to slowly separate from that. To see value in things that are abundant, and put your money to work solving scarcity. “Democratic Goods” are things where there is sufficient supply that everyone who wants it, can have it... at a reasonable price. 

Price surges when there is not enough to go around. Price surges when we borrow to buy at a price we can’t afford... because there is not enough to go around. If you can find and see value in things where there is sustainably enough to go around, you can detach from the relentless stresses and violent shocks of scarcity. 

Gathering Honey

Whose Milestone?

Part of how we are weighed and measured is how much income we make. The assumption being that salary (the price of our labour) is a useful direct form of comparison. Spending can be directly tied to income in a hand-to-mouth world. 

Spending becomes the conspicuous symbol of whether our life is a success or not. A long shopping list of age-measured milestones. “By this age, I need to have done this”, in order to be regarded as meeting expectations. 

It is often community-based. Financial planning can be a team sport. There is an entry ticket price attached to who you spend time with. If you are part of a community, you are measured by its standards. Even smack-in-the-face-obviously wealthy people may not feel wealthy because it is relative to their expectations, and they may feel like they are failing. You can be the 100th richest person in the world, comparing yourself to the 99 with more. 

Unless you can detach from that craziness, you are always going to be treading water. You are always going to feel like you are not in control.

Managing your own Milestones

Weight of Expectation

Difficult times force us to see. To cancel things that can wait. To put aside petty grievances. To focus. To deal with deep challenges honestly and uncomfortably. The root word for the conscious yogic practice of difficulty (Tapas) means “warmth, heat, or fire”. Some of the earliest mentions coming from the heat required for birth. The warmth of the womb. 

Expectation Management is not just living in a world of negativity and expecting the worst. It is not being a “permabear” (permanently talking about doomsday and how good the old days were). If you detach a little from the result and focus on the process, you can start to give generously. Planning can make you obsessed with cause and effect. I did this, so I expected this, and it didn’t happen. 

Expectation Management helps people do anyway. Then do again. Freed from the weight of expectation. The weight of having to prove themselves and their team. I see too many people grappling with monsters in their head to show that they, and the groups they identify with, are “good enough”. Life becomes this long exam where you are constantly weighed and measured. Mainly by yourself and your expectations. 

Scales and Weights

Early Growth

Building capacity for endurance and resilience requires space. One of the reasons it is hard to start saving and investing is because you first need to be able to handle the basic noise. You cannot build if there is nothing extra to build from.

The concept of extra can even trigger people as insulting. One of the biggest pushbacks I get as a campaigner for savings and investment is that for the vast majority of people, this seems ridiculous. When I start saying you need self-restraint, and to spend less than your income. The trade-offs people must make are often hard. “Nothing kills an activist like a mortgage and school fees”.

Life starts living people, rather than people living life. Responsibilities make people much more conservative because they have obligations. There is less capacity for flexibility because people have made commitments that are important to them.

Advice is usually autobiographical, because it is heavily dependent on the story of the person giving it and where they came from. These questions do not have easy answers, but how we create space is a beautiful question. 

Early Growth is Fragile

Negative Niggles

Public Speaking is a great opportunity to practice detachment. Where people become confident is when they are no longer thinking of the audience as judging them. When they are passionate about the subject matter and that passion shows. The listener is thinking about the ideas and the person delivering the sparks almost fades away. Their thoughts are being triggered about things they care about. Seth Godin points out that the audience may even be shooting off at tangents where they are being fired up about their own ideas. You don’t live in their heads but what you are sharing helps them connect dots that light up their creativity. Where your words spread in ways beyond your control. It ceases to be about you. They walk away from the talk excited about what they are going to do. A lot of anxiety comes from judging ourselves and others. Weighing and measuring. Separating people into good enough and not good enough. Are they going to choose me? Are they going to kick me out? Am I going to fail? These negative niggles are what prevent us from honest reflection because they lack fundamental commitment. Feedback cycles only work with deep underlying security. Deep knowledge that not only is it okay to make mistakes, but that that is the way we learn. You are okay. You are enough.

Deep Commitment - speaking at my wedding

 

Good Enough

It feels good to receive acknowledgement and recognition. To be seen and respected. To move onto the next stage of detachment and a really deep knowledge of what is going on, you have to let go of the idea that it is all about you. The constant internal battles about whether you, personally, are good enough. Whether others are good enough. You have to let go of the idea that we work to fund our lifestyle and consumption and respect. We think of liberty as about the individual, but ironically, the ultimate liberty is the freedom to realise it is not about you. The privilege to be working on issues that are bigger and connected to everything. The capacity to fully accept the world for what it is, because you are no longer being battered by waves that separate you from it. When you are able to genuinely see the world, want to understand it, and start asking the right questions rather than enforcing your own view of what the world should be like. To get there, you do need to deal with the rubbish getting in the way. Building space to breathe. 

Waste Generation per Capita

 

Competitive Wiring

I don’t want what I am supposed to want. I have a competitive wiring, so people who have known me in previous incarnations will have seen my crazy eye when I choose to go for it. Even when my skills, knowledge or ability aren’t 100% up to the task. We back the underdog over meritocracy, or we would be wired to roll over and play dead. A school buddy teases me about shouting, “we can still win this” at 78(ish)-0 playing Maritzburg College. We lost 111-0. But when I am the me I like, I try find ways to wiggle out of the nonsense. I don’t want to play in a world where we are constantly weighing and measuring each other. In a way that stops us seeing each other. Where the quality of our lives is determined through regular sortings and divisions. Where we cut each other loose like gangrenous limbs when we can’t reach common cause. I want more than that. Part of that comes from acceptance. I know. I am trying to work out what I can and what I can’t accept.

Competitive Wiring

Good Enough

Meritocracy isn’t supposed to be a defence of privilege. It is the idea that capital and power get allocated on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement rather than wealth or social class. Similarly Capitalism was historically a push back against Mercantilism. Mercantilism looked at Nations as competitive containers designed to win. The aim, it was thought, was to maximise exports and minimise imports. Sell lots. Buy little. Win. The policies led to aggressive militaries and colonial expansion. Enter Adam Smith and the idea of Win-Win. Gunboat diplomacy was the use of conspicuous naval power to use the threat of war should the “negotiation” terms not be in line with what the stronger power wants. Smith made the convincing case that trade and reduced barriers to entry benefit everyone. Similarly, with Meritocracy, we only half heartedly want it. Limited, networked, job and client opportunities mean people are still suspicious of reducing barriers to entry. Meritocracy is now used as a defence of privilege as if conspicuous gunboat signals mean the advantages are deserved. The reason people don’t want real meritocracy is because they walk around thinking they are impostors. We all worry “I am not good enough”, if a great people sorting sees our flaws. 

"Seaport at Sunrise" Claude Lorrain (1639)

Made in Containers

Money is made in containers. Four key barriers to entry are nations, schools, universities, and businesses. You mostly don’t get selected for your Nation. That is primarily race and luck of the draw based. There are however countries that let you in based on selection criteria. I was born South African, did all my schooling in Westville (Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal) and worked at three Companies. In 2008, I moved to London on a points-based visa (salary, language, education, age). I renewed, then got indefinite leave to remain, then got a British Passport to add to my South African one. The whole (expensive) process took 7 years. After school, there were plenty of “sortings”. Times when other people had to decide whether I was good enough. With enough ambiguity in the process, and enough supply of applicants, to try hide the politics and hereditary privilege reinforcement. I mostly made it through, and was fortunate, but also got annoyed at the balance of power. For markets to work, the negotiation has to be between peers. With transparency, and the ability to walk away. The market for labour is lopsided. Containers aren’t people, even though we speak of them like they are. We’ll only see real meritocracy when containers are competing for people, rather than people for containers.

Finding Space

How do we wean ourselves off structural income dependence? Even most of the wealthy live hand-to-mouth in a fragile way. We don’t look at wealth by stress testing. We look at the surface. We live on the edge. Few people suddenly become all Zen when they reach a level of income or capital where they feel they have “Enough”. The incentives of bigger, better, more, provide more immediate gratification than the incentive of deep soaked security. We stretch. We push. We reach. Income Detachment starts with space between spending and income. It is hard to motivate for Buffer and Capital building. There is no shiny new thing on offer. A Buffer just removes the noise. An Emergency Fund of 3-6 months spending. A productive Engine should generate income over time, but spending more than 2-5% of it is likely to put it under pressure. You can go Cold Turkey and extract yourself from spending-based environments, but we are in this together. Wealth creation is a team sport. It is a long-term venture. Across generations. Embedded in culture and relationships. We have to value the ability to breathe, and gradually build our lung capacity.

Sorting

The French word for Fate is Sort. The way we choose what we want to “be” as we leave school, means our careers end up defining us. “Meritocracy” means the lifestyle we then get is determined by the financial value our being adds to society. Unless we get a hand from the Bank of Mom and Dad. In a hand-to-mouth world where we spend what we earn, our salary becomes our price. Price is not Value. Salary is not Worth. You are not your job. What we should be doing at school is recognising that we need to generate Capital to finance our lives, but our lifestyle can be separate from that. It doesn’t have to get fancier as we earn more. You aren’t a better person for earning more. Detaching your lifestyle from your work is the key. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Not everything you believe adds value will make it through the “how to make money” filter. However, if the money problem is sorted, you can choose a new filter. That starts with controlling your lifestyle.

More than Enough

Intrinsic Value is the idea that something has an internal worth separate from the price. Price is a communication tool. A crude number that triggers exchange where for one person the value is more (buyer), and for one person the value is less (seller). Value doesn’t need to be quantified unless it needs to be communicated. To be reduced to a number. To be managed. I like the idea of Democratic Goods. A high price is a better indication of scarcity than value. Like a pressure cooker, not enough to go around pushes the price up. If there is more than enough for everyone, the price is likely to be lower. Value sits separately, and doesn’t care about things like success, respect, hierarchy and peacocks. A good rule of thumb for not paying a scarcity premium is asking whether everyone has access to this thing? Can everyone afford it? Buy Democratic Goods. Sell Conspicuous Consumption.

Enough is Basic

“Enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing”. That is what Buffett believes wealthy parents should give their kids. The keyword there is enough. What is enough, to remove obstacles? What is enough, to remove our fire? The world is wealthier than it has ever been, and the tools required to create wealth have been passed down. Money is made by identifying, understanding, and solving problems for a community of people with a similar need. A Universal Basic Income would serve two clear purposes. First, making everyone have “enough” for their community’s problems to be identified as a target for solving. Second, ensuring everyone has enough to raise their eyes from their own problems. Basic. A base from which to explore. A base from which to create. A base from which to thrive.

Attitude and Commitment

“Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” This is also true of perceived wealth and perceived success. It is worth reflecting on the questions:

1. What opportunities and support have you received in your life?

2. How much have you accomplished?

We visibly see the answer to the second question. There are often shared ranking systems by which the community decides on someone’s success or impressiveness. Who is a big deal? Like being unaware of the fact that a car, clothing, or house were gifts, inherited or the Red Flags of mounting Debt. Both sides of the Balance Sheet count if you want to look at the important bits. Conspicuous is a trick. It is super easy to make a small fortune, if you start with a big one. The impressive bit isn’t the size… it’s what you do with it. Big may give you False Endurance. Big may give you False Resilience. The genuinely important bit is the Creativity. Creativity is driven by attitude and commitment. Showing up fully today. Showing up fully tomorrow. Don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors. Look deeper. See people. Always.

What a very Big Ben you have

Progress and Privilege

Progress has a dark history. "Illiberal Reformers" tells of some of the awkward racism, eugenics, and economic segregation that was part of initial Industrial Age "Progress". The idea was that there was a single development path from savage to civilization. With even the best intention, a paternalistic attempt to spread the light. Many of the worlds greatest atrocities were justified on the basis of industrialized Civilising Missions. Forcing religion on people. Forcing lifestyles on people. Forcing work on people. 

Progress is seductive. Like growth. More seems to be the best possible incentive to keep us from sitting down and becoming a glob of inactive goo. Enough or even Less seem like giving up. Success is all about creating an aspirational future that is not only different from now, but better.

White Privilege and Male Privilege are contentious subjects. As a white, male, I have sat in many conversations with other white men where they have expressed exasperation (yes I know, get me a glass for their tears). Very few people feel privileged. No one likes being the bad guy. Particularly if there isn't an obvious "so what can I do about it" to make things right. If being the bad guy is a permanent state that you have no choice but to accept.

Through "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", Daniel Dennett helped a penny drop in my mind about the reality of Evolution. It isn't about progress at all. He used the analogy of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland to explain it. "You have to run as fast as you can to stay in the same place". We never stop running. We are always comparing locally. We are never better.

"It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." The Red Queen 

Accepting Privilege is as hard as saying you have "Enough". In some ways, it is also saying you have things "Better". It can fall into the trap of thinking there are Development Paths, Savages, and Civilised. It can stop us learning from those "with less" if what you have has to be determined by what you can weigh or count. Privilege can create blindspots. I have seen some epic homophobia and religious superiority complexes from Black Women. Racism and Sexism are clearly two prejudices where we have a long way to go. It is easier to see privilege in others.

The intent of this piece is not to defend those who don't like the concept of Privilege. Who don't believe they are privileged. Who don't want to do the work. It is just an acknowledgment that historically we have a poor history of understanding the unintended consequences of big steps. Historically, we have a poor history of listening to each other. We have a poor history of dividing people up into groups of friends and foes.

Resilience and Sustainability are the true underlying drivers of life. The ability to cope with whatever is thrown at us. The ability to create local meaning and global tolerance. It isn't about progress. It isn't about better. It isn't about growth. That implies a level of understanding that no one actually has. The world is too random, complicated, and ambiguous for us to do anything other than the best we can. To hold onto each other while we do that.

Constraint

A world of scarcity and abundance have different rules. We have flipped the two as people have become richer. Our resources are finite, but we have freed ourselves from the enforced desperation when they were relatively infinite. There is a strong case that we could end poverty by choice. The problem isn't the lack of resources, it is the distribution of those resources. Our total consumption rate isn't sustainable, even if some of us still don't have enough.

I believe it is important to answer the question 'how much is enough?'. I also think the one answer that shouldn't always be allowed is 'more'. A friend of mine doesn't like the word 'should'. He feels it carries implicit judgment. I agree with the principle that we right and wrong are determined by agreement and consent. Largely, people should be left alone to do whatever they like... unless it harms others. That is where I am okay with judgment. That is where I get very judgy. We don't live in isolation.

I am a rule-loving anarchist. I am allergic to non-consensual hierarchy. In my ideal world, everyone would be empowered to say Yes or No, always. That doesn't mean that we should be allowed to do whatever we want.

Rules make the game more fun. Constraints stop winning being the result of someone else losing. The two strongest cases for constraints at the moment are (1) our joint unsustainable consumption, and (2) our joint unsustainable poverty. Rules are just agreements between people to make things better.

One of those agreements should be a consideration of what is enough. You can live a life of abundance within constraints. 

The Blue Marble

Abundance v Scarcity

1801 Map of the World - Mercator Projection

Economics is the study of scarcity. In a world with limited resources, how do we maximise the production, consumption and transfer of wealth for the best possible outcome? Times change, and change dramatically. In 1800, the world's population was less than 1 Billion. Resources were abundant, what we needed was scarce. It is now at 7.6 Billion, and some estimates see us topping out at around 11 Billion. Parts of this explosion has come from massive changes in how much stuff we can make, and how well we can deal with death and diseases. The question of how can we grow enough, shifts to what is enough?  The mindset is completely different. Saying I have enough, allows you to shift your attention to others. Rather than production, consumption, and transfer... study shifts to sustainability, custodianship, and interdependence. Learning to thrive. Learning to share. The study of Sustainable Abundance.

Authagraph Projection

Little Lasting Longer

A large income can be a sign of less, rather than more, Financial Security. One way to think of how big your Buffer is, is to divide the Capital you have working for you by how much you spent last year. This gives a very rough idea of your breathing room. Too many people connect what they earn, to what they spend, too closely. Adjusting to salary increases by spending more. Someone earning a lot may have lots of fixed expense they have to meet. They may have committed to a large mortgage, maybe even a 30-year mortgage in some countries. Financial Security can be achieved more easily with those who gain comfort with very little. By gaining control over your ins and outs.

Financial Freedom can come through spending less

rather than making more

What is Enough?

In the essay 'Famine, Affluence and Morality', Peter Singer looks at the ethics of 'How much is enough'. When we know there are people struggling, what are the ethics around our own level of consumption? What are our obligations to others? How much is doing enough? Toby Ord is part of the Effective Altruism movement which looks critically at where, how, and why we give. He is the founder of 'Giving What We Can' and has committed to capping his own 'allowance' at £18,000 and giving away the balance of what he earns. 

In discussing the project I am involved in working on to build a Community Wealth Fund that pays a Universal Basic Income to 150 people, I was pointed in the direction of leanFIRE. F-I = Financial Independence. R-E = Retire Early. If you combine the concepts of building an engine to finance your expenditure with lean living, the size of the engine required comes down. The leanFIRE group discuss a Sustainable Withdraw Rate (SWR). This is what the Engine would need to earn to pay the amount you need sustainably. 3% seems a sensible figure.

If you combined Toby Ord's approach with a SWR of 3%, you would need a £600,000 engine. To pay a Universal Basic Income roughly equal to the median income per person in the world (c. £180/month) you would need an engine of £72,000 (3% is £2,160). The median income per person in the UK is about £21,000. The UK is a rich country. Toby isn't being a martyr, but living on that amount in the UK still requires some tough decisions.

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/