Why Doesn't It Feel Like Enough?

A friend of mine is retired, sold his company for multiple eight figures, and recently told me that the worst place to be financially is between $10 and $100 million. Too much in taxes. Not enough freedom.

I sat with that for a second. Because for most of us, a net worth anywhere near that range sounds like the finish line. But what that conversation revealed is something I see constantly: the finish line keeps moving. For everyone. At every level.

This episode is about that feeling. Where it actually comes from, and how to resolve it. Because the answer isn't more money. It's something more specific, more accessible, and available to you right now at whatever income level you're at.

Four client stories. Four versions of the same gap. One simple framework that closes it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

I want to tell you a story about a friend of mine. We were recently visiting this friend, and this person was very successful in life, sold his company for multiple eight figures. Yep, eight figures. And you know, we were sitting and talking about money. I feel like my conversations with friends always kind of end up around money. And he said something to me. He said, you know, Mira, the worst place to be is between 10 million and 100 million dollars of net worth. You know, you pay so much in taxes, you don't have the freedom. And maybe he's right, but it just struck me hearing those words come out of somebody's mouth. Because for most people, a net worth anywhere near that range, right? Sounds like a finish line. Like that's the goal. But what I realized in that conversation is that the finish line just keeps moving and it moves for everyone, all the time, at every level. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen this. The woman making 80k who feels like she just needs to get to six figures, the woman earning six figures who's waiting to feel fulfilled at half a million. And here, my friend with 20 plus million dollars telling me that it really is a hundred million where you start to actually feel wealthy. So, today's episode, we are going to talk about that feeling, where that feeling comes from, and how to actually resolve it. Because it's not actually more money. And I want to be really clear about something before we keep going. This is not a gratitude problem. This is not a mindset problem. This is not a you problem. It's something much more specific than that. And by the end of the episode, I want you to understand exactly what it is and what actually resolves it, no matter what your income level is. So let's get started. This feeling of not having enough, it almost never comes from not actually having enough money. I mean, when we have enough money to take care of our core basic needs, anything above and beyond that is extra. So where this not enough feeling actually comes from is a disconnection between how our money is being used and what we actually value. We spend most of our life in this kind of achievement pursuit mode, right? We go to school so that we can graduate, so that we can get into college, so that we can graduate, so we can get a job, so we can start earning and start saving our money and saving for retirement and hitting our targets. And that pursuit has a really strong feeling. It has this direction and this momentum and this purpose. And then we get somewhere and the momentum kind of stops. And what we have left after the momentum stops is the question of what was this actually for? Money in itself is totally and completely neutral. If I haven't said that before, if you haven't heard me say that before, that's a fact. It has no opinion about what we do with it. It's not morally good, it's not morally bad. Um, it will fund an amazing life. I was recently watching, I saw this reel come up on my Instagram, and it was this guy who built kind of this fun house for him and his family where every door leads to something unexpected. And it just had me thinking about how some people can use money for things that really just like bring so much joy into their life and fun. And some people would never even think to use money for those things, right? So money in itself is neutral. We get to decide how we use it. And the feeling of not having enough is usually money reflecting back to us this lack of intention, not necessarily a lack of dollars, right? So it doesn't have much to do with income level. You can feel not enoughness at 80k, and you can feel not enoughness at 800K. And, you know, the math might be different, but that disconnection that we feel is the same. So how do we actually close it? I'm gonna tell you some stories about four people that I've worked with, and I'm really excited for you to hear these stories and maybe see yourself in them a little bit. So I'm not gonna tell you obviously names of any of these people or any identifying information, but I had this client and she was making really good money, and she had family money as well. Um, and she had what on the outside looks looked like a really beautiful life. You know, she had a lot of rental properties that she was renting out. She um she had a nanny, she had a housekeeper, she had a house manager, somebody to kind of pay her bills and make sure everything was handled. She would have food delivered every night. You know, she had all of these conveniences set up for her, but she was so stressed out about money. Every month she was carrying a balance on her credit card, and then at the end of the year, she would get a gift from her family and clear out her credit card balances and kind of just start over again the next year. And she'd say, Okay, this year I'm actually going to be responsible so that at the end of the year, when I get my money, I can use it on something fun. But the cycle would just kind of continue. And so when I sat down with her and we did an assessment of where her money was going, you know, she was, she had her retirement funding was great. She was putting money in all the right places for her future self, but for her current self, she was actually doing something that I preach about all the time not to do. She was using her money to make her life easier, not to make her life more beautiful. And if you've been around for a while, you know that this is something I always say: use your money to make your life more beautiful, not easier. Easy is not fulfilling. Beauty is fulfilling. So making the conscious feeling, making the conscious decision around how we want to spend our money changes what money does for us. So her not enough feeling wasn't about the balance. It was about the absence of the things that actually felt nourishing for her. She didn't have any of that. She was just throwing money at all of those little things in life that like maybe feel like friction, but actually add depth and texture to our lived experience. You know, feeding the cat and taking the dog for a walk and watering the plants and all these little things. Yes, somebody else can take care of them for you. But what are you left with? What are you filling that time up with? Is if it's more time spent at a job you don't love, then you're flattening out your life. So for this specific person, it really was okay, your money is going towards all of these things that aren't making you feel anything. Let's change that. The second person I want to tell you about is someone, a client I worked with a few years back, and she was making really good money in her business. Her business kind of just took off exponentially. All of a sudden, she started earning a lot of money, and she came to me and she was like, I have all of this money, and I feel really uncomfortable spending it. I worry that once I start spending it, I'm gonna lose my security. Um, every time I spend it, I feel like I am doing something wrong. I feel this guilt, and I don't really know what to do with this money that I'm earning. I obviously want to live a good life, but I just don't know what the right thing to do is. And what we did is we looked at her money, we set it up so that she had the right amount going towards her future self, her retirement, savings, things like that. And then we created a dedicated spending account for this person. And this spending account, depending on how much she makes, it fluctuates every month. But that money she knows is just for her to do whatever the heck she wants to with. There's no restrictions on that, there's no rules around that. Spending that money isn't compromising her financial safety at all because other channels have been set up to take care of her financial safety. And that was one of the most freeing things we could have done for this client. Still to this day, she posts about her spending account and tags me on Instagram because it created such a relief and kind of a resolution for her to know that she didn't have to worry spending this money. She was taken care of and she could still spend this money. It changed her relationship with money entirely. Now I want to tell you about a client of mine who this is probably one of like the coolest stories that I feel like I got to experience. Uh, this woman came to me and she told me that her and her husband hadn't really paid much attention to their finances for most of their life. But when they turned 50, they realized they should probably start setting money aside for their future. So they started aggressively, and I mean aggressively saving money. They rented out a room in their house, they maxed out all of their retirement account contributions. And after a couple of years, they had more than$300,000 set aside for themselves. And they were like, can we retire? And at first glance, you know,$300,000 does not feel like a lot of money. But the woman told me that she was from the small village in Mexico and she wanted to return there and start a nonprofit. And the cost of living in this Mexico village was very, very low. So we ran the numbers and realized that yes, they had saved enough money to leave their jobs, move to Mexico, start their nonprofit, and retire. And that's what they did. And that every time I have a client who comes to me who's stressed about money or feels like it's not enough, I always remember the story of how subjective enough is, right? Depending on what you're passionate about, what you want to do, enough doesn't really have to be all that much. And this person chose to pursue this life that felt nourishing and felt fulfilling and felt true to themselves and was able to accomplish that with a few years of dedicated savings. When enough is connected to something real, it is one of the most expansive feelings you can have. Right. And so finally, I want to tell you about a client of mine, and this client, she came to me, and you know, she was making not not not like a huge income, but good enough money in her business. And her husband was making good enough money in his job, but they were very consistent. They saved money every month. They had a really beautiful life that what I call the lean lux life, which is like a life within your means that has all of the things that you really value and treasure and none of the things that you don't. And she, because of her lean luxe life, she set aside enough money to take her family on beautiful trips all over the world to really incredible places. Um, she came to me because she wanted her investment portfolio to reflect her values, to not include very specific things. And so we built her portfolio around her values. She, you know, she every year she got closer and closer to her goals. Now she decided to take uh a position at um a local business just because it's something she's passionate about. She's the type of person who has the ability to just follow their dreams, focus on what's important, ignore the rest, and actually feel incredibly wealthy without having to have this crazy high income. And I want to share this story with you guys specifically because I want you to hear that this feeling of enough isn't like a prize that you collect when you finally get to a certain income level. It's actually available to you right now, at whatever level you're at. It's a practice, it's a way of understanding yourself, your values, your time, your energy, and directing your resources towards the things that are going to make you feel the most fulfilled. These four people, what do they have in common? None of them really found the enough number by making more money. They found it by getting so honest with themselves about what the money is actually for. So now I want to present to you guys a framework, some questions that you can ask yourself to help you close your own gap between where you are and this feeling of enough. So the first thing that I would ask you is what is your money currently in service of? Like, what are you actually spending your money on? Look at your credit card statement, look at your bank account, and look at it as though it's somebody else's. Try to remove, you know, those emotions out of it, the justifications out of it, pretend that it's somebody else's, a stranger's bank account, and see if you can decipher what this person values based on their spending. Right? No judgment, just looking at everything as information. So that's the first question, right? What is the money currently being spent on? What is it currently in service of? Now, the second thing I want you to ask yourself is what do you actually want your money to be in service of? Like, what's the true feeling that you get when you think about how you want your money to be used? Is it, you know, surrounding yourself with beautiful objects, living in a certain way, treating your family in a certain way, having a specific lifestyle? What is the thing? What is the thing that actually makes you feel alive when you imagine it? Okay. And then the third question is what's one thing I can do today? What small thing I can do today to close the gap between what my money is currently doing and what I would like it to be doing. I'm not talking about like a complete financial overhaul. Don't sell your house and move to Bali unless that's something you really want to do. But just something small, right? Oh, you want to surround yourself with beautiful things. Can you go to your thrift store and look for something beautiful that makes you feel alive? You want to take your family on a trip? Can you find a cool destination that's a few hours away within driving distance for this weekend and take your family on a little fun staycation, mini vacation? You want to be in really good shape and prioritize your body. Can you sign up with for a session with a personal trainer? Or sign up for a class at your yoga center? What's one small way that you can make your bank statement or credit card statement actually look like you? So I want to come back to what I was saying at the beginning. You know, this not enoughness thing, it's not a gratitude problem, it's not a mindset problem, it's not a you problem. It's actually a signal, a useful signal that somewhere there's a gap between what your money is doing and what you actually want it to do. And the gap is totally closable. I've seen women close it making less than 100K a year. I've seen women close it making over 500K a year. You know, the number itself isn't actually the point. And if you don't believe me, look at watch yourself make more money. Look at people you know who've made a lot of money and still don't feel fulfilled and still feel like it's not enough and still wonder how they can get to the next level. And I'm not saying you need to stifle your ambition and not want to get to the next level. What I'm saying is you can get there in a joyful way. You can earn more money and really appreciate all of it. It does not have to be you will only be happy when your bank account looks a certain way. And those three questions that I left you with, those are the starting point, right? That's not a full financial plan. That's the little baby step that we start taking toward building this beautiful financial world for ourselves that really truly reflects who we are and what we value and the kind of life that we want to live. Thank you so much for being here. I will see you next week. Goodbye.