The Complicity of Enough

The Complicity of Enough

We are complicit.  All of us in the personal finance community.  We talk about enough as if it is a static goalpost.  A place we arrive at after years of struggle and conservative planning.  We then make life decisions based on this calculation.  I will quit my job in X number of years.  I will stop traveling for work when I reach Y balance in the bank.  The calculations go on and on.  But within this complicity of enough we are being ingeniune.  Enough is a false prophet.  A never-ending mirage.

There is no enough.

There are just varying degrees of adequate.

Enough Money

How much is enough savings?  Usually somewhere about double of what we currently hold.  We are kidding ourselves with the 4% safe withdrawal rate.  Almost everyone I know who considers themselves retired is still making some sort of money or other.  They are either consulting, making money on blogs, or collecting real estate rental income.

The complicity of enough is that some figure can be calculated and then be guaranteed.  There is no guarantee.  No one knows what sequence of returns risk will be in the future.  No one knows when the next world war is coming.  We need to stop trying to comfort ourselves.

And for g-d sakes, we need to stop raising the bar.  How many hardcore 2% SWR fans are there in the blogosphere?

Life is full of unknowns.  Too conservative and you may die the richest man in the cemetery.  Too liberal and you might die a pauper.

After a reasonable amount of planning, the thing that will most likely affect your outcome is the thing that you will be able to control the least.

Dumb luck

Enough Time

The complicity of enough is no more apparent than when we talk about time.  You can’t commoditize time.  There is this strange perception that time can be manipulated, bought, or sold.  There is the belief that by working less we are gaining more.  But again the caveats rear their ugly heads.

Time passes no matter how you “spend” it.  You will not escape life without doing work.  Some of that work you will enjoy.  Some of it you will loathe.  But either way you will spend a great number of your minutes on this earth doing inane things like sitting on the toilet.

Shit happens!

You will never have enough time.  Stop trying to make it less so.  Better to attempt to enjoy whatever task you are doing at a given time than to try to weasel your way out of the space-time continuum.

It won’t happen.  You won’t create extra minutes.

Enough Happiness

I will be happy when I reach financial independence.  I will be happy when I no longer have to go to my tiresome W2 job.  The once I have syndrome takes over and the goal gets farther and farther away.  The complicity of enough is that there is such thing as continual happiness.

Contented people tend to find happiness regardless of their daily surroundings.  I believe it is a state of mind more than anything else.  One can make decisions that have short-term effects one way or another.  But ultimately our best shot is to minimize the bad, and try to grasp some bit of gratitude for the rest.

Risk Management

As my friend Gasem noted in the comments of yesterday’s post, the answer of course is risk management. The complicity of enough is that some figure or concept actually exists that meets this impossible standard.  In actuality, there is just varying degrees of adequate.

We hedge our bets with adequate by managing risk.  We put in place financial systems to guard against running out of money too soon.  We manage our time zealously by divorcing ourselves from those tasks we despise.

And we manage our happiness by building purpose, identity, and connection into our lives and abandoning that which inhibits freedom.