How Much Is Enough?

Last weekend Chris ran a backyard ultra in Nelson, BC. The format is simple and a little cruel: a 6.7-kilometre loop that starts on the hour, every hour. Finish inside the hour and you go again. There's no finish line. The race ends when you decide you've had enough, or when your body decides for you. Chris ran fifteen loops, a hundred kilometres, before his Achilles made the call.

That's this episode's question. How much is enough, and who gets to draw the line?

Why the goalpost keeps moving

Chris thinks deciding when you've had enough is one of the hardest things any of us does. If you aren't careful and intentional about it, wanting more is the default: a better vehicle, a bigger house, more income. It's what everyone around you is doing.

Scott's point is that big goals aren't the problem. You come out of school with student loans, you start a practice, you scrimp, and you picture the house, the community you'll raise your kids in, and the trips. Those take money, and if one of them really matters to you, we'll help you get there. The trouble starts when chasing more crowds out the things you said mattered most.

From 100 visits a week to 250

In a practice, the goalpost usually moves on the schedule. A colleague's numbers are higher than yours, so 100 visits a week becomes 150, then 200, then 250. You hit the number and barely feel it, because you were so focused on getting there. Meanwhile it cost you something. Maybe your practice ran smoothly at 175 visits a week with one staff member and no headaches, and getting to 250 means another hire, more hours and more cost.

None of that is wrong in itself. Sometimes the next step is the right call. The question is what the extra revenue is for, and whether the trade is worth it to you. If your week is built around being home for dinner and getting the kids to their activities, more hours at the clinic is the trade to look hard at.

Scott admitted he needs the reminder too. On the drive home from a conference a couple of weekends ago, he got a gentle one: the business is doing well, and he doesn't need to work as much as he does. Knowing where your line is doesn't mean you'll always stay behind it.

A client who asked a better question

Before their fall meeting with us, a client sent through what they wanted to talk about. Their practice has grown well and life is good. Their question was this: if we cut our revenue by 20 or 25 percent so we can spend more time away from the practice, will we still reach our goals? Will we still retire when we want to?

They weren't asking how to grow. They were asking whether they needed to.

Doesn't more money mean more happiness?

Chris pushed back. Doesn't the research say more income still goes with more happiness?

Scott's short answer was yes, and he pointed back to his conversation with Shaun Maslyk at Future Proof (EP 051, Q&A at a Money Festival Pt. 1). You may have heard that money stops making people happier past a certain income. That isn't what the research found. For most people, more income goes with a bit more happiness, and no ceiling has been found yet. But the effect is small, and every extra dollar buys less of it. (The research uses US data.)

Scott's take, drawn from that conversation, is that money tends to add to a good life rather than build one. If you already have good relationships, your health, and things you love doing, more money can make those better. Chris compared it to a practice. Growth on top of good systems opens up options. Growth without systems doesn't fix anything.

Three questions worth answering

To find your own line, Scott and Chris use three questions from George Kinder of the Kinder Institute, whose life planning work is built around them. Scott paired them with Carl Richards' four sources of capital: your money, your time, your energy and your attention. Planning means matching those to what you say matters most.

In our own words, Kinder's questions ask:

1. If money were never a worry again, now or later, how would you live?
2. If a doctor told you that you had five to ten years left in good health, without knowing exactly when the end would come, what would you change?
3. If today turned out to be your last day, what would you regret not having done, or not having been?

Kinder's own wording is here. Take the questions in order and write your answers down. Then, as Chris suggests, go back to the first answer. It often changes once you've answered the third.

Scott's closing point is that nobody at the end asks about your net worth, your returns or how efficient your tax return was. What counts is how you made people feel and the life you had, which comes back to what's enough.

"The knowledge that I've got enough"

Scott closed with a story he keeps coming back to. Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote Slaughterhouse-Five, and Joseph Heller, who wrote Catch-22 (yes, that's where the phrase comes from), were old friends. After Heller died, Vonnegut published a short poem about him in The New Yorker in 2005. In it, the two of them are at a party thrown by a billionaire on Shelter Island. Vonnegut points out that their host may have made more money in a day than Catch-22 had earned in its whole history. Heller replies that he has something the host can never have. Asked what that could be, he says:

"The knowledge that I've got enough."

— Joseph Heller, in Kurt Vonnegut's poem "Joe Heller," The New Yorker, 2005

Heller wasn't knocking the billionaire. He knew where his own line was. Chris's contrast is the billionaire himself: if you never draw a finish line, the race keeps going, and the feeling of having enough never arrives.

In this episode

• Chris's backyard ultra, and a race with no finish line
• Why the goalpost keeps moving, in life and in the practice
• From 100 visits a week to 250, and what each step costs
• A client who asked whether they could scale back
• What the research says about money and happiness
• George Kinder's three questions
• Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and the billionaire's party

The one thing: if you don't draw a finish line, the race just keeps going.

Listen to episode 054 of The Chiro Money Show →

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