Social scientist and columnist Arthur Brooks said, “Beyond a certain income, working harder simply to have more money to buy things is pointless, since we find that none of life’s biggest problems—which typically involve our relationships—are solved. Quite the contrary, as spending more time fruitlessly chasing well-being up the income curve often means spending less time on love.”
By definition an amateur is “someone who does something for the love of it and not for money.” If that’s true, I hope I’m an amateur.
Of course, I did have to work for a living, but as I planned for retirement, I affirmed that I was more motivated to live on less than I was to continue “grab[bing] that cash with both hands and mak[ing] a stash” as Pink Floyd said. I focused on the fact that decreasing what you want has the same effect as increasing what you have.
John Bogle’s 2009 book, Enough, begins with a story: “At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel, Catch-22, over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have…enough.”
The Truth is in the Middle 