Chapter 1: What does it mean to have 'enough' money?
Hey everyone, it's me, Rima Grace. So for the last six years or so, I've been asking people to share some of the most intimate details of their financial lives. I was in my late 20s when I first started doing this podcast, and I really wanted to understand why our relationship with money can feel so complicated and heavy. And since then, the show has taken me to all sorts of places.
We've told stories about financial infidelity and the ways money can quietly erode a relationship. I knew in that moment I could not keep this secret any longer and live with myself. And so I said, well, I have debt that I haven't told you about. We've looked at how something as basic as your teeth can shape your job prospects.
I have this emotional attachment to good teeth. And the thought of not having them again, it scares me, actually. Because it would be reverting to that past Ryanne, who was young and not doing really well in life.
And I've even talked with family members of people involved in extremist groups, trying to understand how things like money and power get tangled up together.
The worse things got, the more he hoarded. I knew it wasn't normal to be tripping over piles of survival gear. when we couldn't afford to take anyone to the dentist for years on end.
And along the way, my life has changed. I've gotten married, I've moved cities, and the world feels different too. Things cost more, the margin for error feels thinner, and there's just a lot of uncertainty in the air. I've been wanting to build a stronger community for a while now to feel a little less alone with our money.
And so to really do that, I'm very excited to say that This is Uncomfortable is going weekly. More episodes, more opportunities for us to connect and learn from each other. I'm really looking forward to this new chapter and I want you all to be a part of it. I want to know what sorts of things are keeping you up at night. What's on your mind?
What are your money wins or the parts of your finances or the economy that don't quite make sense? You can always call us and leave us a voice message at 347-RING-TIU. Something that's been on my mind lately is just how precarious the economy feels, even when the numbers don't always reflect that. So many people are struggling to cover the basics.
And even if your finances technically work on paper, the ground beneath you doesn't always feel solid. You're bracing for your next rent increase or for your health care insurance to get more expensive or for one medical problem to upend your finances. I'm someone who tends to feel anxious that everything could tip over at any moment. Even when I was a kid, that's where my brain went.
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Chapter 2: How do societal expectations shape our financial anxieties?
And I mean, that's why I want to do this episode, because it's something that I've thought about quite a bit. And once I actually sit down and have to think about it more concretely, like, oh, what's my actual number? I can feel the anxiety spiking in my body because, yeah, for so long, like you, it's just been a treadmill. Yeah.
And it's hard because on the one hand, you could realize, oh, my God, I do not have enough for what I want to achieve. That might mean I have to get a new job. I have to do whatever. I have to switch apartments. But the other side is realizing you have more than enough. And you have to sit with the fact that you are, in many cases, hating your life at your job and have more than enough.
And I'm not suggesting that everyone quit their job, but it's about making different decisions. Might you take a longer vacation and actually use all your PTO? Might you not aim to be a people manager because you actually don't need the money and that would cause you more stress? So it's the two sides, which I think that is even more powerful in some ways.
Because most of us think we don't have enough, whether we do or not. So for Miriam, enough stopped being about hitting some magic income and became about how much risk she was willing to live with in exchange for autonomy. I was curious what the research says about this question, how much is enough. And it turns out experts have tried to pin a number to it, at least as it relates to happiness.
For years, they thought that your emotional well-being kind of leveled off once your basic needs were covered. At one point, like 15 years ago, that number was $75,000. People have kept arguing over the exact figure, but newer research suggests there might not actually be a ceiling.
There are some exceptions, but on average, the research shows that the more money people have, the happier they tend to be, which feels kind of sobering that there isn't a clear finish line. But it also makes sense. Like, how many of us have thought a raise would solve our financial problems just to have the rent or insurance premiums or grocery prices go up unexpectedly?
Unless you're ultra-wealthy, there are always going to be so many factors out of your control. Which makes it hard to think about enough even being possible. When you hear this question, how much is enough, what's the first thing that comes to mind? What are your fears? What are you so afraid of? Wendy De La Rosa is an assistant professor at Wharton.
I wanted her take because she studies how money feels, and she thinks that's what this question is really about. So much of what we spend the last decade studying is how people feel about their money, which can be fundamentally different from their objective financial situation. Like, our feelings are really stemming from our perceived difference between our expectations and reality. I should...
be at a better place than where I am, or I should be earning more than what I am earning now, or I shouldn't have this much debt. We are social creatures by nature, and so we are engaging in social comparisons all the time. I find myself feeling like that depending on the social circles that I'm around.
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Chapter 3: What are the different definitions of 'enough' from listeners?
Like, there's nothing more emotional than how we feel about our money and how we make financial decisions. Yeah. And this is like a lot of this conversation assumes that you have the basic needs met, right? Rima, I think that's such a great point. I think I have a personal convulsion that happens inside of me when people say like money doesn't make you happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm like, oh, you've never been poor.
Actually, my life right now is objectively better than what my life was like 20 years ago. It's nice. It's nice to have a little more. Yeah, so it was clear when I was younger that we didn't have enough. The answer was clear, no. And how much is enough? I think that was a question where, man, if we can have our own apartment, that would be amazing.
They were clear, tangible ways in which we can answer that question that were about meeting people's basic needs. Now, I remember after I started working, I had paid off my student loans. And for the first time, I could ask myself the question, how do I want to contribute to society or what brings me joy? I think we have to be really realistic for a lot of people.
Asking yourself that question, what brings me joy, is a luxury. I think there's all of these podcasts and YouTube videos saying, follow your passion, follow your dreams. Without wrapping it up into the reality that for a lot of people, there is no safety net. You are your family's safety net. And that's a really difficult place to be. So for me, I'll be really honest.
I only started to reframe that question of how much is enough once I had the luxury of not, of living above, of being able to, right? Of living above like a self-sustaining line. 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.
Hi, this is Matt from Taysom, Arizona. And I think what kind of came to me while I was on parental leave, which is like the financial security that I could work because I wanted to work, not because I had to work.
Hello, I'm Vijay Chinta. I would love to leave a little something behind for my children and spend time with my mom, who lives in a different country and unable to travel. To me, having enough means having the time and the means to be there for those moments while I still can.
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Chapter 4: How does the hedonic treadmill affect our perception of money?
So I was stressed.
And at the time, were you living by yourself?
Did you have a family? No. At the time, I was living with my partner and my daughter. And my daughter was just finishing high school. So I decided to do this experiment once she had finished high school and she was set up safely in her own life.
How are the people in your life reacting and how would you sell it to them? Were you like, I just want to give up money? How did they respond?
I knew that it would not go down well with my partner. And I knew that it meant that we would have to break up because he was looking to do the opposite. He was thinking of moving back to Sydney and back into his kind of high powered money making lifestyle that he had come from. I had hoped that he might be able to come part of the way, but yeah, no.
When I did talk to him about it, he was not very interested.
All right, so you decided that you want to live a life without money. What's the first thing that you do?
Well, the first thing that I did was I made a list of the things that I would need, actually need, not want, but need. And it was very short. It was surprisingly short. We all know, I guess.
What was on that list?
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