“The Wise Person Decides How Much is ‘Enough’
Before Setting Foot on the Path to Riches.”
Now we arrive at the deepest secret of happiness associated with
wealth. Also, this is the most difficult initiation test of all seven. Yes,
knowing when to stop is actually more difficult than making it in the
first place!
Remember one thing. The aim in life is to be happy. Money is one
way (yes, a big way) in which you can achieve happiness, but don't
lose sight of the fact that it is happiness you are after as a final goal,
not money.
If you ever make any real money you will be so caught up in your
astonishing success that you will find it very hard to quit. You will be
tempted to work harder and faster to get more whilst the going is
good. Then, if you hit a lean time, you will work harder and faster to
try and get back what you have lost. In short, you will always be
working harder and faster. Knowing when enough is enough is the
most difficult challenge you will ever face.
Most people do not face this challenge because they rarely make
enough to live on and almost never create a surplus. However, it is
useful to ask yourself the question at any stage of your life, even if
'flat broke' as I hope to prove.
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This is one of life's big questions, and I believe it would help you
to try and answer it right now. In this single question I believe is
embodied the spirit of the next thousand years - no small claim!
What is the question?
"Do You Have Enough?"
Strange question! Perhaps you're thinking "enough of what?" Or
even, "what is he talking about?"
I have deliberately phrased the question in this simple form. You
know what I'm talking about. You know what the question means. So
I would like you to close your eyes for a moment, and let the question
work its magic, before I elaborate and spoil its simple power.
Now I will answer your question, "enough of what?" I mean
enough money, enough material possessions, enough 'things.' And
before you answer a resounding "No - that's why I bought this book!"
let me tell you some interesting facts about your current level of
wealth. (I have accounted for inflation in these statistics.)
Wealth Fact #1
You are approximately one thousand times richer than the average
ancient Egyptian, ignoring Pharaohs - you are only a mere fifty times
richer than a Pharaoh. Of course you don't have the piles of gold they
had, but that's not the point. The point is what they could and did buy
with that gold, which was mainly slave-power. It has been estimated
that modern inventions such as the motor car, washing machines,
dishwashers, etc. are the equivalent of owning one thousand slaves,
making you wealthier now (whatever your level of poverty) than the
kings of the ancient world.
But...are you fifty times happier than a Pharaoh? Are you one
thousand times happier than the average ancient Egyptian?
Are you even as happy as they were?
Wealth Fact #2
You are about three hundred times richer than the average ancient
Briton living at the start of the first millennium; i.e. the year AD 1.
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You are an estimated thirty times richer than the wealthiest king or
lord of that era. By richer, I mean your access to clean wholesome
food, potable drinking water, transport, power, medicine, shelter,
clothing and labour-saving devices, to mention only a few things.
Stagnant piles of loot stacked up in a warehouse are not riches, any
more than ten million in a Swiss bank account which is never touched
is 'money.' Wealth is only meaningful if it is used.
Wealth Fact #3
You are an estimated one hundred times richer than the average
Briton living at about the time of the Battle of Hastings, i.e. at around
the start of the second millennium, the year AD 1066. You are ten
times wealthier than the richest man on the planet one thousand years
ago.
I am not including land ownership in these statistics. The mere
ownership of land is not wealth: riches are measured in what the land
produces. To prove this point, let me hereby grant you 100%
ownership, absolute, of the planet Pluto - all ten trillion acres. You
own the entire planet. Congratulations! Has it improved your level of
wealth by even 1%? No, because it produces nothing.
Are you one hundred times happier than someone from 1066? Are
you even as happy?
Wealth Fact #4
You are fifty times more wealthy than the average peasant living in
the year 1500. Life was hard back then, but are you fifty times
happier than they were? I doubt this very much. Are you even as
happy? I wonder...
Wealth Fact #5
You are thirty times more wealthy than the average Englishman or
woman living in 18th-century Britain.
Wealth Fact #6
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You are twenty times more wealthy than the average Victorian.
Looked at another way, you have the equivalent today of twenty
Victorian servants working for you. A Victorian household with
twenty staff would most definitely have been owned only by the
superrich.
Wealth Fact #7
On average you are likely to be five time richer than your
granddad. Are you five times happier than he was?
Wealth Fact #8
On average, you are likely to be twice as wealthy as your own
parents, although this depends on your age. If you are 18, it will not
apply. If you are 50, it almost certainly will. For example, think back
to the thirties, forties, fifties, or sixties, whichever decade is closest to
when you were growing up. Did each family have two cars? Mobile
telephones? Dishwashers? Microwaves? Did your mom and dad take
expensive foreign holidays, sometimes even more than one in a year?
Did they wear expensive designer clothes? You get the idea. In the
1930s, which surely is only 'yesterday,' over 25 million Americans
had no income whatsoever; only 1% of UK homes had a telephone;
only 50% had electricity and nutrition was so poor that six out of ten
men who applied for the army failed their basic "if you can stagger,
you're in" medical test and could not join up.
Wealth Fact #9
You are already in the very top 1% of the world in terms of wealth.
Most people on the planet still live on subsistence farms, carrying
water from long distances, without sanitation or electricity. Are you
happier than they are, on average?
At this point in the proceedings, I want to ask my question again:
"Do you have enough?"
Think about it. You are already one thousand times wealthier than
an ancient Egyptian, three hundred times richer than someone living
in AD1; twenty times wealthier than the average Victorian; five times
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wealthier than your grandfather and in the top 1% of wealthy people
on the planet.
Do you have enough?
This is not a one-shot question, it is a question for life. You need to
continuously ask yourself this from now until you die. If the answer is
still "no," then I want to ask you a supplementary question which you
need to answer, right now: "When do you think you will have
enough?" I am not asking these questions for amusement only. I
believe the answers hold one of the keys to your happiness for the rest
of your life. Again, no small claim. Let me explain.
Welcome, Fellow Rat
Recently I've started to notice something. I have become aware of
the incredible stress under which most people live their lives - myself
included. People are working harder, faster and certainly under more
stress that at any time in history. I agree that the labour is not usually
hard physical toil, but still the average person is slaving away forty or
fifty hours a week to make enough money to make ends meet - i.e. to
sustain their 'poor' lifestyle which is twenty times wealthier than the
average Victorian. Furthermore, they are not happy.
In general, we are all overworked, highly stressed and on a
treadmill getting nowhere fast. It's the rat-race which was identified
so long ago. Incredibly, although we are all approximately one
thousand times wealthier than an ancient Egyptian, we feel broke.
Most people are fighting a losing battle against a tide of debt and
expenses which threaten to sweep them away if they do not keep their
noses pressed firmly to the grindstone. Despite their huge wealth, in
historical terms, many people are anxious and depressed by their
'poverty.'
This seems incredible, doesn’t it? What on earth would an ancient
Briton make of us if you brought him here in a time capsule?
He would see the clean, safe water on tap - it took him one full day
each week of backbreaking labour just to get enough water, and that
was brackish and flavoured with dead sheep; he would see the
stunning abundance of food at almost give-away prices - you have to
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work just 24 hours a month to buy all the rich abundance of family
food, he would have to work an average of 160 hours for some basic
meat and bread. He would note your clean clothes and the dozens of
different sets of clothing you owned - he owned one set and it was
constantly filthy as there was no soap and no hot water. He would
marvel at your health, your teeth, your longevity - his life expectancy
was 30 years, his teeth were rotten stumps and people died all around
him from disease and hunger.
I could go on about transport (he had none), opportunities (zero),
education (crude), entertainment (sitting around a camp fire and
telling Wild Boar jokes), but I also think he would be shocked at the
level of unhappiness and stress we were all living under. He would
legitimately ask why on earth we were all striving so hard when we
had everything and more that we could possibly need.
Why, he would ask, did we not all feel incredibly wealthy and
happy?
Well, let me ask you a few questions.
Do you feel extraordinarily wealthy?
Are you happy?
Do you have an almost stress-free life?
Do you have plenty of time to do the things you want to do, or are
you always working to hold back the tidal wave?
Are you engaged in a constant struggle for more, more, more?
If so ... when do you think you will have enough?
Now please do not think for a moment that I am on some kind of
anti-wealth, back-to-nature, tree-hugging crusade. Nothing could be
further from the truth. I have not make any comment about how much
‘enough’ might be. This is for you to decide. It could be £50,000 or
£100 million.
My task is to get you to think about the question, because the
answer has profound implications for your happiness.
How Much is Enough?
To explain this, let me make a blunt statement:
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Your greed is insatiable (mine too, of course). There is almost no
limit to what you would want to possess. The only limit is the price
you would be willing to pay to obtain it, and your imagination. To
prove this, let us play a little game in which the price of anything you
want is zero. I mean it will cost you nothing in cash terms or
emotional terms and requires zero time or input from you to maintain.
This, if you like, is the ultimate free lunch.
I'm getting my cheque book out. I have unlimited resources at my
disposal. How large a cheque would you like, made out to you
personally? Remember, it’s free in every sense. No penalty, no tax, no
hassle. It's yours to have and to spend on whatever you want. Shall we
start the bidding at, say, £50,000? Remember, I really do have an
unlimited account. How about a quarter of a million? You could buy a
nice house with that, mortgage-free. Hopefully your imagination is
not quite so shackled and you are already starting to think about a
nice fat juicy cheque for a million pounds. No problem. It's not my
money, and it's unlimited. Have what you want - there are no strings
attached.
One million pounds will allow you to buy the house of your
dreams, and the car(s) of your dreams. What's that? You'd rather have
ten million pounds? Now you're talking. I was getting worried about
you for a moment there. That's more like it. This will give you all the
money you could ever need for the rest of your life. It would take care
of your children and your grandchildren.
Enough?
Remember, it's free. All that is limiting you is your imagination...
Let's face facts, ten million pounds would not even buy you
admission to the outer circle of the superrich. To tempt you further,
and in case you think I was just kidding with that 'unlimited' promise,
let me disclose that I have one hundred thousand million, billion
pounds in this account, earmarked to give away - and you're first in
the queue. You can have the lot, if you want, and I won't turn a hair,
in fact you'd be doing me a favour as I could then close the account
and stop worrying about it.
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What would you do with it? Come on now! Think! You could buy
your own country and run it the way you wanted to. You could own
and run the entire United Kingdom or America or even
(bwahahaha...) the world! Why not? Your vision for the world can’t
be any worse than the current awful state it is in! Couldn't you do a
better job if you had absolute power? How about being absolute ruler
of the planet? How does that sound? But wait... the earth is just one
planet in the solar system. How about owning a few other planets too?
How about owning the entire Martian planet, and having the money to
teraform it exactly as you want?
Your own world, and you as.... God.
Now perhaps you dropped out somewhere on that continuum,
possibly at the one million or ten million level?
Or perhaps you were with me to the end? I can tell you with
absolute certainty that I definitely would be up for the job of Total
Ruler of the Planet. No question. And it would be a better place than
it is now! If you did drop out, it was because your imagination failed
you. You simply could not imagine having more money or power
than this.
Now back to reality...
Our Insatiable Greed
I hope I have proved that your greed (my greed, everybody's
greed) is almost limitless if I make it a free lunch for you. Apart from
your lack of imagination, the only thing which holds you back from
owning the whole planet is something known as 'paying the price'
which we discussed in Secret 5, chapter 6.
To remind you, everything has a price in time, effort, risk, stress
and strain. There truly is no such thing as a free lunch. If you want
£50 you have to pay the price (e.g. five hours work). If you want
£20,000 each year, then the price is typically forty hours of your
irreplaceable life each week working in a job you barely tolerate.
If you want one million pounds, the price is typically, ten solid
years of 60-80 hour weeks; high stress, almost zero social life, poor
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family life and high personal and financial risk. That's about the going
rate. You may get it cheaper, or it may cost you more.
If you want ten million pounds, the price is typically a lifetime
spent in the fast lane as a top industrialist or entrepreneur. The price is
active media coverage of your personal and corporate life; twenty or
thirty years of 80 hour weeks; permanent stress; living in the ‘white
water’ of a constantly changing market place and absolute devotion to
your vision to the exclusion of almost everything else. You will have
no real friends - you can never tell who your real friends are when
you have this level of wealth; you will attract government
surveillance - money equals power, governments cannot allow the
drones to have too much personal power and so they become very
interested in you when you make more than ten million.
If you want one hundred million or more, the price is everything
associated with getting ten million, plus a slavering pack of press
wolves, desperate to strip you down to the lowest common
denominator. You will have many enemies both personal and
political, some of which will actively want you terminated. For
example, an estimated thirty million people world-wide detest Bill
Gates and would spit straight into his face if they could only get in
range. About 1,000 of these are crazy enough to murder him, given a
chance and a clear shot. I am not joking here.
You will be unable to live anything approaching a normal life. You
will not be allowed out on your own without bodyguards, and you
will live in a heavily guarded fortress. Most people will loathe and
despise you, no matter how much of your wealth you give away to
charity as a token gesture. Even if you give away one billion pounds
you will be despised and vilified for being mean - most people will
just shrug and say “he can afford it.”
That's the price, give or take.
Okay, so we're ready to pull a few threads together here.
Here are the facts as I see them:
1. You are already staggeringly wealthy compared with at any
previous time in history, yet you are running harder, faster and under
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immense personal stress in order to get more. You don't know how
much more, because you have never thought about it. I also humbly
suggest you are not very happy.
2. Your greed is, to all intents and purposes, insatiable. This is not a
moral judgement. It is simply a statement of fact about human beings.
What you would like to have is limited only by your imagination, and
your willingness to pay the price required to get it.
3. Given that there is a price to pay in time, effort, stress, emotion,
and risk in order to obtain a given amount of wealth, any sensible
person would ask themselves the very basic question: “How much is
enough?” Or, put another way: "Do I have enough? If not, when will I
have enough?"
The purpose of life is not to stack up money in the bank. Despite
my pro-wealth stance and motivational materials I have never claimed
this. The purpose of your short stay on the planet is, I believe, to be
all you can be and to live a happy, fulfilled and balanced life. You
need money to live a decent lifestyle, and depending on your vision,
you need money to make your dreams a reality. More than this you do
not need. If it was free, you would take it of course, so would I and
rightly so. But it isn't free. Everyone must pay a price to obtain it.
When you ask yourself the simple question: "Do I have enough?"
something almost magical happens. Many people describe a feeling of
release - a sort of letting go. You might feel that you are finally able
to drop a burden which you have been carrying all your life.
Whatever you feel, there are surely only three possible answers to
this question:
1. I have more than enough.
2. I have exactly enough.
3. I do not have enough and am willing to pay the price to get more. I
now need to ask myself: "So when will I have enough?"
To expand on these three answers:
1. "Now you bring it to my attention, I realise that I have more than
enough. I am debt free, and have considerable savings, yet still I am
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working 60 hours a week in a high stress job. A lot of my money
actually goes to pay for my high profile lifestyle which is required by
the job. For example, I need to live close to my job and housing is
very expensive in our area. If I moved, I could get a larger house for
half the money. It costs a fortune to commute to w