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swirlie · F
I get asked this same question a lot by entrepreneurial business women whom I mentor who are new to the realm of self-employed business ownership. What I have observed over the past 10+ years of employment freedom, also known as self-employment, is that our level of wealth seems to move in lockstep with our standard of living. The more money we make, the more affluent we try to appear to others as if trying to prove our success to the world which we tend to wear on our sleeve like a badge of honor in western cultures.
But when the chips are down and our level of perceived wealth dips below our view of the distant horizon, the less affluent we try to appear to others suddenly, as our financial reality causes us to take a moment of pause and reflection.
The bottom line is, it's never the amount of money you have or potentially will have that determines how much money is enough money, it's always the standard of living we adopt for ourselves if our undisciplined approach to financial mis-management is permitted to move in lockstep with our floating income levels, that determines how much money is enough.
Therefore, money of itself has nothing to do with being enough of itself because if left unmanaged, there will never be enough money. This means that our standard of living is our only true barometer of how much money will be required to maintain that standard of living at all times through the high times and all the low times without having to cut corners and scale back throughout an entire business cycle to accommodate an ever-fluctuating cash flow.
But when the chips are down and our level of perceived wealth dips below our view of the distant horizon, the less affluent we try to appear to others suddenly, as our financial reality causes us to take a moment of pause and reflection.
The bottom line is, it's never the amount of money you have or potentially will have that determines how much money is enough money, it's always the standard of living we adopt for ourselves if our undisciplined approach to financial mis-management is permitted to move in lockstep with our floating income levels, that determines how much money is enough.
Therefore, money of itself has nothing to do with being enough of itself because if left unmanaged, there will never be enough money. This means that our standard of living is our only true barometer of how much money will be required to maintain that standard of living at all times through the high times and all the low times without having to cut corners and scale back throughout an entire business cycle to accommodate an ever-fluctuating cash flow.