The centerpiece of your identity and life’s purpose?
A means to get richer than your neighbor to become happy?
Or actually richer than the rest of the world?
Thanks to the internet “we can compare ourselves to every humblebragger from around the globe and it’s making many of us miserable because everyone’s life is perfect on the Internet and our real life is flawed. This is a game you’ll never win because the other side is always cheating.”
When you spend to impress, remember that those whom you’ve impressed will not be there to bail you out when the good times end. So why bother?
You do not need to earn other people’s approval.
Who told you that this would be important in life?
So coming to my final question:
Is work merely a means for ‘buying yourself free time’?
Got another 5 minutes?
Then check out this thought-provoking piece by Ben Carlson (who usually writes about investing) with some lessons from the age-experienced thrown in for good measure.
https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2019/02/why-are-people-miserable-at-work/
“Enough is a feast. Enough is abundance.” — Buddhist Proverb
Dear TACOMOB – Care to share how much you stored away or invested until you decided it was enough to retire and FIRE? This will help the rest of us still laboring come to better understanding of how much is enough. Thank you.
Hi Andy, great question. The answer is not so straight forward. It is very subjective and depends a lot on your attitude towards money and lifestyle (hopefully without lifestyle inflation). To get closer to your personal answer you might want to change perspective from “How much can I get?” to asking ourselves “How much do I need?”
And not just how much do I need to survive, but how much do I need to thrive.
“How much do I need to lead a life that is meaningful, purposeful, and joyful?”
I have summarized my thoughts on this in this blog posts https://takingcareofmyownbusiness.com/2016/10/08/without-this-you-will-never-achieve-financial-freedom/
Mathematically you could tackle this question from this angle: Life expectancy minus targeted age to retire times xx% of your current annual expenses. This assumes that your assets are in asset classes that have a good chance to beat inflation in the long run. That xx% is a tough call. Can you imagine to retire with spending eg. 50% of your current expenses?