Do I Make Enough Money?

Written on January 26, 2010 – 6:40 pm | by admin

This is a weird question, but I get it a lot from readers: Do I make enough money?

Well, do you?

It’s a weird question because wealth is almost always RELATIVE, and rarely absolute. Do you make enough money compared to Bill Gates or Warren Buffett? Probably not — and I doubt they will invite you into their bridge club any time soon.

Do you make enough money compared to someone in India who subsists on $2 per day or less? Do you make enough money compared to someone who has lost everything they own in the Haiti earthquake?

Or how about this: is what you have more than the net assets of an old friend who has gotten himself hopelessly into debt?

Asking whether you have enough is sort of like asking whether you’re tall enough, or whether your eyes are brown or blue enough.

Tall enough? Who cares. Maybe if you want to be in the NBA, or you want to be a runway fashion model, then height is a (moderate) concern. Otherwise, it’s not, past a basic point of acceptability… Whether you’re 5′10 or 6′1 or even 6′5 makes little difference in most career fields.

As long as your height isn’t preventing you from functions you need or want to do, it probably isn’t a big issue for you. The same with your current net worth.

If you’re wealthy enough to do what you love, and to do it while remaining debt-free, you probably have enough money (for now).

On the other hand: if you are working for money, rather than letting money work for you 24/7, you may not have enough.

In that case, the solution is simple, but not sexy: spend less, save more. Read personal finance blogs like this one so you’ll know about good investment ideas and will be amongst a like-minded community of smart people interested in saving, building, and protecting their wealth.

Becoming wealthy isn’t about “greed” or anything like that. It is about the desire to do what we want, and to have financial freedom at the end of the day — to buy our friends and family good experiences, to buy the things we enjoy, and to have as much (or as little) free time as we want.

Outlaw

Credit Cards Offers Online