Never Enough
Updated: Oct 16, 2023
Hello people!
How are you?
I think I should be answering that first đ
Well, I could say that I was juggling between work and health and hence, reading and writing blogs were always put on the back burner, but the truth is I was on a different level of procrastination spree. Until I received a mail from Wix asking me to renew my subscription, I didn't realise that it had been precisely 6 months and 5 days since I had posted any blog.
Nevertheless, I'm back on track (I know, I've said this in the majority of my blogs đĽ˛).
In the third chapter "Never Enough", the author Morgan Housel explains how we always seem to want more money, no matter how much we have and the factors driving this behaviour.
The author states,
"For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit today on what enough entails."
The author gives examples of people who have made millions of dollars, but still feel like they need more to be happy, which leads to reckless financial behaviour, such as taking on excessive debt or investing in risky ventures. We all have heard of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi etc. The question we should think about is why people with more power, prestige, and wealth are ready to risk these in quest of even more.
Because they have no sense of enough.
The author suggests a few things to remember when someday we have a sum of money sufficient to cover every reasonable thing we need and a lot of what we want:
The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. Our financial goals seem to be on a treadmill; we just keep running after them. Every time you stop, you feel as if you're plunging behind and the only way to reach your goal is to keep moving ahead. But life isn't any fun without a sense of enough. Happiness, as it's said, is just results minus expectations.
Social comparison is the problem here. People who earn 6-figures desire to make at least 7-figures. Then there are others who are still not satisfied with millions of income. The author says, wishing to overtake your peers can be the fuel of hard work. But it's a fight that never be won, or the only way to win is to not fight to begin with- to accept that you might have enough, even if it's less than those around you.
There are many things never worth risking, no matter the potential gain. This is one of my favourite paragraphs from this chapter: Reputation is invaluable. Freedom and independence are invaluable. Family and friends are invaluable. Being loved by those who you want to love you is invaluable. Happiness is invaluable. And your best shot at keeping these things is knowing when it's time to stop taking risks that might harm them. Knowing when you have enough.
There is no reason to risk what you have and need for what you don't have and don't need.
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I'm pretty active on Instagram too: https://www.instagram.com/anisha_anil25
In case, you missed reading the Introduction- The Psychology of Money: Introduction, the first chapter- No One's Crazy and the second chapter- Luck & Risk
I hope you learnt something through reading this blog. If Yes, then make sure to like the blog, comment, share and subscribe to the email newsletter if you haven't yet. I post a blog every Monday at 7 pm IST, until then Happy Reading!
This is beautiful
Good work by Good people