When You Have Enough

Kurt Vonnegut and novelist Joseph Heller were once at a party hosted by a billionaire hedge-fund manager. Vonnegut pointed out that their wealthy host made more money in one day than Heller ever made from his novel Catch-22.

Heller responded, “Yes, but I have something he will never have: enough.”

Most of us would be better off with more of that kind of thinking.

This story, based on a poem that Vonnegut wrote in the New Yorker in 2005, has made a lot of rounds because it reminds us about how we want to live our lives, and the amount of money we’d need to do that. Morgan Housel discusses feeling rich in his latest column for The Motley Fool.

Will you ever reach a point that you’d feel like you have “enough”? Are you going to be a person who feels poor with $10 million because your neighbors have $100 million (James Altucher has admitted to feeling this way, and, apparently, so did Gary Kremen, the founder of Match.com)? I have to admit that I have yet to reach a point where I feel like I have “enough,” but I think I’ll have a better sense of that once my student loans are paid off and my career progresses a bit more.

Photo: Les Chatfield

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.