Almost a Million Dollars
The exercise that made me quit my job three years later
“Enough is a fearless place. A trusting place.”
-Your Money or Your Life
Over the last two weeks, I’ve been writing about limits.
First, about choosing a ceiling.
About drawing a line to protect what mattered.
Then, about subtraction.
About removing what wasn’t essential before trying to change anything else.
There was one more step before I could leave my job and take a year for myself, and it had nothing to do with math.
I had to decide what “enough” meant for me.
The Book That Changed the Question
In March 2015, I picked up Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.
At the time, I thought it was a book about money.
What I remember most is that it wasn’t.
It was about satisfaction.
The book describes something called the fulfillment curve.
First, additional money improves your life. Basic needs are met, and daily living gets easier. Then the curve flattens, and if you keep pushing, it turns downward.
More begins to cost more than it gives.
Enough sits at the top of that curve.
Not as an ideal but as a real place you can stand.
The authors describe it as a fearless place. A trusting place.
That language stayed with me.
Then I did the math.
Hotel Stationery
I was 35, a Retail District Manager with eleven stores across three states. I traveled 60% of the time. Hotel rooms and airport terminals.
Step 1 of Your Money or Your Life asks two things: how much money have you earned in your lifetime, and what do you have to show for it?
I did the math sitting at the desk in my room at a Hampton Inn in Upstate New York.
I wrote the numbers on hotel stationery.
Almost a million dollars.
That’s what I had earned over my working life. As a minimalist, I was okay not having “stuff” to show for that number. I didn’t need the house or the fancy car. That wasn’t what hit me.
What hit me was realizing I did have something to show for it.
I had memories.
Million-Dollar Memories
When I was 21, I traveled to Tokyo.
I had never flown domestically, let alone internationally. This was still the era of paper maps and travel guides. I spent over a week between Christmas and New Year’s, wandering a city I couldn’t read, eating food I couldn’t name, feeling more alive than I ever had.
I remember drinking champagne under the Statue of Liberty replica near Tokyo Bay. I also remember knowing, in real time, that my life would never be the same after that trip.
That is what I had to show for the money. Not possessions. Experiences. Tokyo at 21. Stand-up comedy stages across 13 states. The person I had become because I chose presence over accumulation.
But sitting in that Hampton Inn, I realized something else. The life I was living now wasn’t building more of those memories.
It was preventing them.
I had spent years becoming someone who could afford freedom. And somewhere along the way, I had traded the freedom itself for the appearance of success.
The money was fine. The life I was trading it for wasn’t.
I felt two things at once: relief that I finally saw it, and fear about the jump I would need to take next.
Three and a half years later, I quit my job.
Why Most of Us Never Reach Enough
Most people never arrive at enough because they never define it.
Enough gets treated like something external. A feeling that will show up later, after the next milestone or the next raise.
Without definition, enough keeps moving.
And whatever moves can always be chased.
When I decided to take a year off, I didn’t begin with a savings target. I started by asking what kind of life I was trying to protect.
That question forced clarity in a way budgeting never had.
The Compass Was Already There
Looking back, I can see the sequence.
Minimalism helped me remove what was unnecessary.
Saving created a runway.
Defining enough stopped the chase.
Enough didn’t arrive one day. I chose it.
This is scarcity versus sufficiency with money and meaning.
Scarcity says: more is always better. Keep climbing. The next level will finally feel like enough.
Sufficiency says: enough is a decision, not a destination. You can stand there now if you’re willing to name it.
Where the Compass Points
When I bring the ENOUGH Compass to money now, it doesn’t ask for numbers.
It asks simpler things:
Notice: What actually supports my life right now?
One Focus: What am I protecting by choosing enough?
Honor What’s Yours: What definition of enough feels true for me?
Your enough only needs to make sense to you.
A Small Practice
This week, try something small.
Finish this sentence for yourself:
For this season of my life, enough looks like…
Not forever or for anyone else.
Just now.
That answer means more than any number ever could.
Exhale.
P.S. What would change if you stopped waiting for enough to arrive and decided what it meant instead?