I have previously written a post on ENOUGH but I could not help myself to expand on it. Enough is such an important concept. It determines happiness, financial future, physical and mental health and many other issues. When we quit our jobs at 43 and 45, we were already millionaires (not that difficult with property and economy growth in pre coronavirus Australia). We thought that we have enough for modest income, which can support long term (or maybe indefinitely) our not too extensive NEEDs and even many (not all) WANTs. OK. We could have another one or two of millions extra on the top of this couple we already have. Would it make is happy or more secure than we are? Yes, but only marginally. That would also mean we would lose decade of our life working in a job which we unfortunately did not love, not having time for ourselves, not being able to devote more time and energy to our beautiful twin boys.

 A decade of life between 45 and 55 of an individual is incredibly precious. It is time when you still can do almost anything you want (unless you are really unlucky) but you also realise that everything has its end and you should be happy and enjoy the life. So we have decided we value this decade more than extra couple of millions. We are lucky, we could make this choice, because most of the people financially struggle and cannot get their head around possibility of retiring from standard job at 43, especially without any major windfall like a winning, inheritance or marrying into money.

I know many people more wealthy than us who would never consider that they have enough at current point. To feel having enough for them might mean cheaper car, cheaper house, less dining out, 3 stars holidays instead of 5 stars. That is not something what these people would be ready to accept. Everyone is different. I have accepted it and my life turned around.

I feel like I don’t need more, like I am very content, like I am helping environment by not buying more rubbish which has to be made from resources, which need to be mined while damaging environment. Then this stuff ends up in tip anyway damaging the environment even more. Also by buying many second hand products we actually save them from going to the tip and we are saving the new ones from being produced.

Then there are different people. Please don’t think I am being judgemental. I just believe I have a right for an opinion, and sometimes I need to express myself, that there are some things, which I cannot understand.

One of our favourite shows on TV is Grand Designs with British designer Kevin McCloud presenting families and individuals building architecturally interesting properties. This show has many episodes, some are even from Australia and New Zealand. Last episode quite got me.

British couple in their late thirties (I am guessing) managed to buy large older house on the cliff overlooking ocean. They had 2 early teen daughters. The husband seemed to be very successful and creative in the music industry with healthy stream of royalties. So they owned this house overlooking beach (in their thirties!). That was not enough. They had a dream. Knock down this perfectly good house (costing over $3mil) and build a Grand Design house with part resembling four stories tall white light house tower! They were at that point very happy couple with 2 kids extremely well off by any country standards living in a dream house.

Demolition started. Suddenly also problems started. Biggest one being of course funding this dream. So even this rich man had a dream which was very difficult to fund. It looked like cost to build this dream might exceed $4mil. That is on the top of that $3+mil spent on the original house. He started construction anyway. If I recall correctly only the driveway was about $1mil. He kept building and chasing funding, refusing to compromise. He needed it to be PERFECT.

Cliff was steep and a wild ocean was slowly eroding it. In some parts the rock was incredibly hard. Original timeline was 18 months. The man kept chasing banks for funding and became quite innovative by getting money from some private equity fund (at what I believe was 8% interest!).

At the end it seemed he has run out of funding options on the brink of bankruptcy. After 7 (yes seven!) years there was only building with rough walls mainly unfinished. It all still looked like construction site. He was at that point still hoping he might be able to finish it sometimes. This struggle took a toll on his relationship with his wife to the point where they split. Impact on their daughters, and of course him being almost bankrupt.

This episode left us speechless and sad. At the beginning they were so rich, happy and talented  couple. How it could all end up like this? To be honest, after watching many episodes on Grand Designs, I cannot say it was completely unexpected. Many builders there have bitten off more than they could chew. But this one was different, as they were so much well off and there was no need for this in my view. If they just had ENOUGH at that point when they were living happily in their cliff top original house, everything could be different.

That is at least how I understand the concept of enough. Everyone’s enough is somewhere else. For these guys enough was high in the sky, and some monk in the cave in mountains can feel like having enough also. I am trying to be somewhere in the middle. Let’s find and keep our ENOUGHs to have a happy and content lives.