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How Much Is Enough?

Enough: occurring in such quantity, quality, or scope as to fully meet demands, needs, or expectations (1)

The dictionary definition contains a catch-22. It says that enough will meet demands, needs or expectations. However, demands, needs and expectations can be a changing target, so we can find ourselves in a never-ending circle of trying to get “enough”.

Let’s imagine for a moment that “enough” is a fixed point. What happens if we have more than this?

“Is something really adding to their happiness, or is just more stuff to store, insure, fix, forget about and ultimately sell in a garage sale.”Once we have reached this point, we are simply acquiring unnecessary stuff. This causes us to work more to afford this stuff, and then our free time is taken up maintaining it. As Vicki Robin puts it, is “something really adding to their happiness, or is just more stuff to store, insure, fix, forget about and ultimately sell in a garage sale.”

Looking at it this way, it is clear that there is a point where we have “enough”. Let’s take out the fixed part. But the truth is that once we start allowing that “enough” point to move, desires take over, and enough starts jumping ahead of where we are. This is where the cycle begins.

Where we once considered that just shelter and food was enough, then we think, well, a telephone would be good, and a nice bed, and a television, and a computer and…. It goes on ad infinitum.

What Figures Into Enough?

Everyone’s definition of enough is going to be different. A hermit will have a drastically different take on the concept than a working mother.

“If you don’t know how much you have, you can never have enough.” The best summary of what “enough” is can be found in the article “How Much Is Enough?” by Vicki Robins, one of the co-authors of Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence (aff). One of the most intriguing points she brings up is that people who know how much money they have. She says “If you don’t know how much you have, you can never have enough.” I don’t necessarily think that applies just to money, but to everything that involves “stuff”. If we really don’t know how many socks we have, we will never have enough. Same with food. If we don’t know what is in the cupboards, we will buy more because we don’t have “enough”.

So perhaps in determining what our personal levels of enough are, we need to look at what we have, what we intend to do with it, and the motivations behind our desires.

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(1) Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

(2) “How Much Is Enough?” by Vicki Robin

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Photo by [[MorphoMir]]

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