Rima Grace

One of my takeaways from Wendy is that when we ask how much is enough, we're often responding to fear and questions about our own worth.

But what happens if you take money out of the equation entirely?

That's after the break.

Welcome back to This is Uncomfortable.

You know, I ended up talking with a lot of people for this episode and how they thought of enough.

And right away, I noticed some patterns.

Like a lot of you all said, it really comes down to feeling like you have options.

Some of you all said enough shows up in the smaller things, like when you're standing in a grocery aisle and don't need to do the math in your head.

Julia says if she does lose her job, she'd move back into her van, a lifestyle she says she doesn't mind.

A lot of you all pointed that out, that the cost of healthcare changes the entire equation.

My name is Amy, and I live beneath my means and save up as much as I can.

But five years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer.

The medical costs in the first year alone reached about $800,000.

Now, I had insurance, so that's okay, right?

But my out-of-pocket costs were still about $30,000.

So until we can reach a point where there is some kind of safety net so that people aren't afraid they're going to lose absolutely everything, no, there's no such thing as enough.

What Amy is getting at is that it feels like so much of the risk, the really catastrophic stuff, falls on us as individuals.

Another listener, Cynda, made the point that it didn't always feel like this.

A lot of that shock used to be absorbed by the systems around us.

I'm from Southeastern Michigan, which was once the land of unions and pensions.