I was talking to a good friend the other day - she's ambitious, driven, extremely talented but like many of us, she's trying to balance work, family and happiness while realizing her ultimate passion/purpose in life, not an easy task. So we were chatting and she told me she had played the lottery the previous weekend which was at $80M. Then she said, "Carson, if I won $80 million dollars, I would stop taking meetings before 8 am.”

That statement stopped me in my tracks. As personal finance expert Ramit Sethi often points out, when we keep moving our financial goalposts, even $80M won't feel like "enough" to make meaningful changes in our lives. Morgan Housel, author of "The Psychology of Money," puts it even more starkly: "The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. It gets especially hard as you get wealthier because society has a way of breeding insecurity about how much money people have.”

4 years ago, I was a newly separated, unemployed mom of two, living 3,000 miles from family and my support network. I was job hunting and I was financing the transition with a personal loan and an old 401k, and when those funds began to dwindle (it happens so much faster than you think,) I bit the bullet and got a waitressing job in the evenings, while I spent my days sending out resumes. Being out of the the work-force for 8 yrs. while raising kids wasn’t getting me the string of opportunities I had hoped for, even with my college degree and decade long background in environmental consulting.

I remember during this time, having a chat with another very successful friend who was coaching me into thinking bigger and she asked how much I needed to make every month to cover my expenses. I remember saying “my expenses are pretty minimal, I just need 3k a month.”

Well fast forward to the present and 4 years into a corporate career, with an airbnb bringing in revenue, I find myself panicking when I don't make 3xs that now. This is exactly what Sethi calls the "moving goalpost syndrome" - where our definition of "enough" keeps shifting upward, not because our actual needs have changed, but because our psychology has. As Housel notes, "Modern capitalism is a pro at two things: generating wealth and generating envy." The goalpost keeps moving and in my case, it doesn't correlate directly with rising expenses, they're still pretty minimal, instead it correlates with my comfort levels, and my growing aversion to risk. And I know for a fact, that on my deathbed, I'm not going to be saying, "I'm so glad I worked all those years at that job I complained about every day, so that I could feel comfortable and safe.”

Sethi challenges us to flip this script: instead of asking "How much money do I need to feel secure?" we should ask "What does my rich life look like, and what's the actual cost of funding it?" Housel complements this by emphasizing that

true financial freedom comes not from hitting a specific number, but from understanding the difference between being rich (having a high current income) and being wealthy (having the freedom to choose how you spend your time).

That being said, its important to set a numerical goal post as a way to plan and motivate for your financial freedom and I'm on a quest to find my true "enough" number - not by continuously moving the goalpost out of fear, but by honestly calculating what it would take to fund the life I actually want to live. Once I determine that number, I'm going to cement that goalpost in place and refuse to move it, even an inch. Because as both Sethi and Housel suggest, the goal isn't to be the richest person in the room - it's to use money as a tool to craft a life worth living.

Let's come up with our "enough" number and make a pact to set ourselves free when we reach that goal. But let's do it thoughtfully, based on our actual desired lifestyle, not our fears or society's expectations. Who's with me?!