I used to think there was a number. That if I just earned a little more, saved a little more, hit some invisible mark, I'd finally feel like I could exhale. I don't think that number exists, not because the amount doesn't matter, but because "enough" was never really about the amount.
I've noticed something, the anxiety around money doesn't shrink in a straight line with how much of it you have. It shifts shape instead. When you have little, the fear is about survival, will this cover what it needs to cover? will there be enough left over for tomorrow?. When you have more, the fear doesn't disappear, it just changes costume, now it's about losing what you built, or not having enough compared to some new standard you've set for yourself, or one others set without meaning to. The goalpost moves because it was never really fixed. It moves with us, quietly, and we don't always notice until we're standing further from peace than we thought we'd be by now.
Even at the very top, this holds true. Bill Gates has held the title of world's richest man for 16 of the past 21 years, and he's still adding to that fortune. Warren Buffett, worth well over a hundred billion dollars, still describes himself as "cheap" for continuing to live in the same house he bought decades ago, proof that reaching an unimaginable number didn't change what he actually needed day to day. Names like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg keep building and expanding long after "never worry again" money was already achieved many times over. If reaching the number solved the restlessness, wouldn't it have solved it for them first? It seems the goalpost isn't fixed even at the very top, it moves with the person, not the balance. (Fortune).
What I keep coming back to is this, money satisfies best when it's tied to something specific, this bill, this goal, this person I want to help, this dream I'm building toward. It disappoints most when chased in the abstract, as a stand-in for security or worth or peace it was never actually going to deliver on its own. A number in an account doesn't feel like "enough", a need that's been met does.
I think the maybe the real question isn't "how much is enough," but "enough for what." Enough to cover today. Enough to breathe until the next one. Enough to do the thing that actually matters to me right now. That kind of enough is reachable, for a teacher in Port Harcourt just as much as for a billionaire chasing the next milestone. The other kind, the abstract kind, isn't, no matter how much you pile up chasing it.
I don't have this fully figured out. Some days I still catch myself chasing the abstract number instead of the concrete need. But naming it helps me notice when I've drifted from what I actually needed money for, in the first place and gently walk myself back to the real, reachable thing.
Images are ai generated.
