Money: how much is enough and what lies beyond?

We’re seemingly on a juggernaut, from pre-school to university to the office. We continue beating a path laid down by decisions taken when we were barely teenagers. Subjects, leading to careers, leading to promotions. A tunnel of ever-specialisation. 

If alternative motivations such as helping people, launching your own business, working outside or doing something you’re talented at aren’t chosen, then the blank is filled in with ‘money.’ It’s the implicit choice when no other choice is made. 

Money is obviously important, but how much is enough? Is every pound earned as valuable as the one before it? Should it always be one of the most important factors when considering our careers and lives?

If you’re desperate to lose weight, for example, you know roughly where you’ll stop. You don’t keep restricting your diet, getting smaller and smaller until you disappear. However, when we say we want to earn more money, or ‘be comfortable’ we don’t have such a clear idea of where to stop. 

While the answer for everyone will be different, researchers have previously located a point where the income to happiness curve plateaus. They found that at an income of £50,000 per year, like an overindulged drug, more money fails to fulfil its promise of happiness. 

Maybe billionaires stand as evidence that money alone can’t satisfy us. Their accumulation of wealth hasn’t satiated their desire to make more. They have more wealth than entire nations, and rather than appearing satisfied, they now want to physically leave earth. Their endless wanting expanding intergalactically. 

If the first billion didn’t satisfy, it seems unlikely that any amount can. As Dr. Vincent Felitti said, “it’s hard to get enough of something that almost works.” If ‘enough’ would mean the end of wanting, the end of needing more, then money alone can’t be the answer. 

And if money isn’t the answer, maybe we could remove it from the question, just for a bit. When considering what career to have, what to devote your unique talents to, maybe it would be liberating to ask the question of ‘what should I do’ without hearing the opinion of money. Money, like fog, can distort the image and hide a far larger landscape of opportunity.

How would you spend your time if money were no object?

Alan Watts, the English writer and philosopher, used to ask students out of school this very question. Their answers would be that they want to be creative people, artists, help people, work outdoors etc. All professions that they are warned away from due to financial concerns. If we change the rules of the game, just for a few minutes, and remove money’s grip from our imaginations, what futures could we dream for ourselves?

The exercise could look something like this: write down “what would I do if money were no object?” Then, write whatever comes to mind without judging it. Do not consider the viability of any suggestion, whether it be silly, childish, irrelevant, unsubstantial, nothing. Allow yourself to think visually, to imagine what things may look like.

When you’ve finished, it may be best to leave it alone for an afternoon or a day but to keep the thoughts and images percolating. When you return, there may not be a silver bullet, an easily actionable change, but there will be nuggets, ideas, forgotten ambitions. What little (or large) changes can be made to make some space for these ideas? Maybe these are the things of which we feel we don’t have ‘enough.’ 

The difficult wrangling over the future of our careers can be reinvigorated when we loosen the grip of money. They can suddenly appear as highly exciting prospects. Opportunities rather than prisons. Once having enough becomes a possibility, a balance can be struck. Money matters, of course, but maybe sometimes it’s helpful to pretend it doesn’t. 

Accompany this with Changing Career: What About The Money Question? Penned by our co-founder, Rob Symington, or 6 Ways to Minimise Financial Risk, then for some inspiration from Escapee Priya read From Investment Banker to Purpose-led Career.