How Much Money Would You Need to Stop Working for the Rest of Your life? (2024)

Financial Freedom

The entire point of accumulating money is to trade it in for time and freedom.

But, how much money do you actually need to exchange for a lifetime of doing what makes you happy and fulfilled? The answer to that question can be incredibly clarifying for your financial plan.

To come up with your minimum number for what you consider “enough,” we need to talk through three issues;

1. The connection between money and happiness.
2. Cost of living and what you value in life.
3. Building your savings plan to accumulate “enough” money.

The depressing reality of money and happiness

It turns out that money can buy happiness. But only if you make more money than your neighbor. That was the finding of a research paper published in the Journal of Psychological Science.

The study found that people were slightly more satisfied with their life as they made more money, but their level of satisfaction peaked when they were told that they made more money than their neighbors. Similarly, if someone found out that their neighbor made more money than they did, they were less likely to be satisfied with their own life.

People are more concerned about their economic rank in society than funding a happy, fulfilled life.

Based on the results of this study, if I asked someone how much money I would need to give them to stop working and still live a happy life, their response would be “$1 more than my neighbor will make.”

That is a depressing and sobering statement.

Let’s turn the conversation in a more hopeful direction and talk about the steps you can take to break free of the status quo of tieing your happiness to your economic rank in society.

Put your phone down

You will never have “enough” money if you compare your financial position to any…