Growing up, I was around a lot of people with a lot of money.
I didn't really know what any of it meant.
I just knew they were rich.
Then I started making more money myself.
And something interesting happened.
My definition of "a lot of money" kept going up.
First $1 million sounds like a lot.
Then you meet people worth $5 million.
Then $10 million.
Then $20 million.
Then you meet someone worth $100 million.
There's always another zero.
And if you're not careful, you can spend your entire life chasing a number that keeps moving.
That's what made me start asking a different question.
How much money do I actually need?
$1 million doesn't necessarily change your Tuesday
The first million dollars is a good example.
It's a huge accomplishment.
But I think before you have it, you imagine it's going to feel bigger than it actually does.
Then you get there and you're still you.
Especially depending on where the money is.
If it's sitting in a 401(k), that's obviously a great thing.
But it doesn't necessarily pay your bills tomorrow.
It doesn't give you control over your calendar.
It doesn't mean you can leave your job.
I started thinking about this a lot before I left corporate America.
At the time, I was a VP of sales making somewhere in the mid-to-high six figures.
I had a good job and a good earning trajectory.
But I was also building my business on the side.
Eventually, I realized I wasn't going to find out how big it could become if I kept giving it whatever time and energy I had left over.
That's when the financial question changed for me.
It wasn't just:
What's my net worth?
It became:
What do I actually need my money to allow me to do?
That's a very different question.
So I priced my ideal life
Instead of picking an arbitrary net worth target, I started from the other direction.
What does the life I actually want look like?
Not some fantasy version.
A normal Tuesday.
Where do I live?
What kind of house do I want?
How much do I travel?
How do I travel?
What do I spend on health, food and convenience?
What do I actually want to do all day?
For me, a really good day isn't that complicated.
Coffee.
Walk outside with the dogs.
Work out.
Work on things I actually find interesting.
Maybe I work until 9 or 10 one night.
Maybe I block off a Tuesday because there's something else I want to do.
I don't necessarily want to work less.
I want control over my time.
Once I had a pretty clear picture of the life, I started putting numbers against it.
Primary home.
Eventually another place.
Kids.
Travel.
Health.
Cars.
Convenience.
All the random stuff that comes with life.
If I go pretty far with it and check almost every box I genuinely care about, I get to roughly:
$100,000 a month.
Obviously that's a lot of money.
Your number might be $10,000.
It might be $20,000.
It might be higher than mine.
That's not the important part.
The important part was that suddenly my number was finite.
That changed how I thought about getting rich
"Get really rich" isn't a plan.
There's no finish line.
But a life that costs a specific amount of money is something you can actually work backward from.
What does that lifestyle cost?
How much needs to come from active income?
How much capital would I need invested?
What could that portfolio reasonably produce?
How much flexibility do I want?
Now I have an actual problem to solve.
And strangely, doing the exercise made the finish line feel closer.
Not further away.
It also made me realize how misleading net worth can be.
Someone can be worth $20 million on paper and have most of it tied up in a private business, a house and retirement accounts.
Someone else can have a lower net worth but millions of dollars invested and producing income.
Those people might have completely different levels of financial freedom.
That's why I've started paying attention to three different numbers:
Net worth.
Investable net worth.
Portfolio income.
I go much deeper into these three numbers in the video, because they completely changed how I think about my own number.
But this was the bigger realization
When I finished the exercise, I asked myself another question.
If I woke up tomorrow and the financial side of my life was completely handled, what would I actually change?
And the answer was:
Not that much.
I'd still work.
I'd still build businesses.
I'd still invest.
I'd still make content.
I'd still get coffee and walk the dogs in the morning.
There are definitely upgrades I'd make.
I'd eventually love a ranch with a bunch of animals.
Flying private sounds pretty great.
But those are upgrades to my life.
They're not an escape from it.
And that might be the bigger point.
Maybe the goal isn't to get so rich that one day you can finally change everything about your life.
Maybe the goal is to build a life you don't want to escape from, then build enough financial freedom to protect it.
That's what this week's video is really about.
Not picking some magic net worth number.
Figuring out what "enough" actually means for you, putting real numbers against it, and then building the financial engine that can support it.
Because if you never define enough, the goalpost can keep moving forever.
Watch: How Much Money Do You Actually Need?
