Financial planner Meg Bartlet wrote an article to make us consider we may always need to re-calibrate where our Enough is.
I might be wrong, but I feel like there is always a tension about how hard you should push yourself.
You can give your time, your effort, and your whole life to grow your feelings or your revenue, and it is hard to know when you have done enough. There is a lot of this in what you read and watch, and it always seems to tell you that you haven’t put in enough.
But at the same time, what each of us actually needs might be different. We are all trying to deal with that in our own way. Sometimes it feels like a struggle, and I think that’s because we can’t really process it in a structured way.
For me, at least, it has required persistent attention, reminding myself that I’m measuring myself against my own plan, not against outside metrics or goals. There is unrelenting pressure to seek More More More.
Go ahead and guess the ratio, in my professional world, between conference sessions about “here’s how to grow your business and attract more clients and hire more people” and sessions about “hey, uh, so you could just…not.” And that’s just a microcosm of the culture we all live in.
It’s a real tension, and I think a lot of us feel it.
Even after a few years, many people still feel like they’re just getting started. I suspect that’s because they never found out how hard they can really push. It’s a bit like being in your twenties, when your energy and fitness are at their best, and you just keep pushing and pushing.
That sticks with you. So the next time you build something, you stop at that same point and treat it as the gold standard. You don’t really stop to think that the point itself might need calibrating.
How a Small Business Owner like Her Figured out her Enough.
Meg doesn’t really derived her enough from a financial independence angle but more like as an ongoing business. Since she’s a financial planner herself, that’s how she looks at it, structurally.
Some of you who run your own business might be able to spot an approach there and use it in how you think about things.
In the article she explains:
- Her trigger to calibrate, which is a cancer 3 years ago and a relapse a year ago.
- With every client, big or small, I think you should be able to look at the revenue coming in and what it costs to serve them. Those numbers should show how each client stacks up against what you actually need and what you actually want. That could help you figure out whether the number of clients you serve today is enough, or whether you need to take on more. It might also show whether you need to cut back on spending, and if that’s even possible.
- I think figuring out what most people have today is a good place to start, and whether that’s enough. It’s a bit like an ongoing business, but you also need to save up for the future, like your retirement. That means looking at your revenue, taking away your expenses, and then taking away what you need and want today. Do you have enough left over to actually reach your goals?
- The good part is that she’s the financial planner, so she can do her own financial modeling. I think these are the kinds of things that will help our clients at Providend.
- I think it’s good for us to remember that enough doesn’t always mean enough money. Time is money too. Can you control the number of hours you work? Meg talks about that. She realized she could take on more clients, but right now she has fewer than that. I think that’s a sweet spot. It’s something a lot of us could stop and think about, especially when it comes to where we are with our client numbers and how we grow.
You can read Meg’s short article here: Reaching Enough Isn’t the End. You Gotta Practice Enough.
Kyith is the Owner and Sole Writer behind Investment Moats. Readers tune in to Investment Moats to learn and build stronger, firmer wealth foundations, how to have a Passive investment strategy, know more about investing in REITs and the nuts and bolts of Active Investing.
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Kyith worked as an IT operations engineer from 2004 to 2019. Currently, he works as a Senior Solutions Specialist in Fee-only Wealth Advisory Firm Providend. All opinions on Investment Moats are his own and does not represent the views of Providend.
You can view Kyith’s current portfolio here, which uses his Free Google Stock Portfolio Tracker.
His investment broker of choice is Interactive Brokers, which allows him to invest in securities from different exchanges all over the world, at very low commission rates, without custodian fees, near spot currency rates.
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