I heard something recently that I thought was pretty interesting:

If having more money wouldn’t change how you live your life or what you do, then you already have enough. You are wealthy.

It doesn't mean wealthy in the sense of having millions in the bank or never needing to think about money again. It means reaching a point where having more wouldn’t make a meaningful difference to how you actually live.

You might buy a slightly nicer car or spend a bit more on holidays, but your everyday life wouldn’t really change. You would still live in the same house, do the same work, spend time with the same people and enjoy the same things. If that’s the case, what would more money actually give you?

I think we’re constantly encouraged to believe that more is better. Earn more. Buy a bigger house. Keep pushing towards the next financial milestone. But there must come a point where more money is simply more money.

It doesn’t change what you do on a Monday morning. It doesn’t change where you live, who you spend your time with or what you do at the weekend. It just becomes a larger number on a screen. And I suppose that's what having enough really means.

It’s not necessarily being able to buy anything you could ever want. It’s reaching a position where you can already live in the way you want to live. More money might be nice, of course, but it wouldn’t fundamentally change anything.

I see this quite a lot in financial planning. People can become very focused on reaching a particular number without really knowing what they want that number to do for them.

How much is enough to retire? How much should I have in my pension? Should I keep working for another few years? All sensible questions. But I think there's another question that matters just as much:

If you had more money, what would you actually do differently?

If the answer is that you would retire, reduce your hours, travel more or help your family, then the extra money has a purpose. It would change something meaningful about your life. But if the honest answer is “not very much”, perhaps you’re closer to having enough than you realise.

That doesn’t mean you should stop saving or planning for the future. It doesn’t mean money no longer matters, and it certainly doesn’t mean you should spend everything you have. Financial security is important, particularly when we don’t know what life might bring.

But there's a difference between building financial security and accumulating more simply because we’ve never stopped to ask when it will be enough. 

Maybe wealth isn’t a particular number. Maybe it’s reaching the point where more money wouldn’t change how you live, because you can already afford to live the life you want.

And if you’re already there, even if you don’t feel particularly wealthy, perhaps you are. 🩷