Be honest.
How often does your mood follow your portfolio?
Green day, you feel great. Red day, you feel off.
Your partner asks how your day was and the first thing that comes to mind is either:
“Good, today market green!”
“Sian, today market very red..”
Truth be told? I’m guilty of this, more I'd like to admit!
But I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the recent few weeks, and I think this goes way deeper.
I think this says something about our relationship with money. Not just in investing, but in life.
I Was Like This Too
There were years I was so focused on making money that I could not tell you what I was working toward. I just knew I needed more. More income streams. More hustle. More numbers on the screen.
When I put more thought into it, I realize a lot of it traces back to how I grew up. How I emulated my parents. Afterall, we’re shaped by who we were around with. I watched my mom hold one job her whole life and my dad hustle through several things to support me and my siblings through university.
In that environment, I learnt fast that hard work is how you prove your worth. That if you are not pushing, you are falling behind (I guess that’s what the millennial generation is about?)
And so, I pushed.
The Question I Could Not Answer
I still remember an incident that happened eight years ago with my wife (who was my girlfriend then). I was deep in a side hustle, giving it whole nights and weekends, sacrificing time with everything else. She supported and helped me at first, but gradually that turned into arguments.
The one that got me was this simple thing she said:
"What is enough? What are you working so hard for?"
I did not have a real answer. So I said the only honest thing I could: I am doing it for us. I don't know how much we need, but I know we need as big a safety net as possible.
That period strained us. The relentless pushing, the inability to switch off. I eventually let go of that side hustle. Not because I wanted to, but because something had to give.
It took me a long time to understand what that moment was really telling me.
The problem with chasing a number you cannot define is that you never arrive. It is a carrot on a string. No matter how fast you move, it stays just out of reach.
If this feels familiar, I created a short Investor Clarity Check for readers who want to understand what’s really holding their investing back.
It’ll help you to reflect on where you are, what you’re trying to build, and where you might need more clarity.
It Was Never About the Money
We grew up believing that more money means more happiness. Maybe through all the joys we see our family tie to money. Well at least for me (and maybe some of you too). That if we just had a little bit more, things would fall into place. The stress would ease. We could finally breathe.
But research tells a different story.
Harvard's longest-running study on happiness, spanning over 80 years, found that the biggest predictor of a long and fulfilling life is not wealth. It is the quality of your relationships. The people around you. The connections you actually invest in.
And yet, we keep acting like the number in our bank account is the answer.
But money is a tool. A tool to experience life, to provide for the people you love, to create options for yourself and your family. That is all it is.
Somewhere along the way for me (and you), the tool became the goal. And when the tool becomes the goal, you lose sight of what you were actually building.
Because the question was never "how much is enough?"
It was "what kind of life do I actually want?"
Time Is Our Greatest Currency
Here is the part I wish I understood sooner.
Lost money? You can earn back. Time? Once it is gone, is gone. And yet we treat money like the scarce thing and give our time away freely, to whoever or whatever demands it loudest.
Shouldn't that be flipped? Make the goal not more money, but more of your time spent on things that actually matter. Family. Health. Experiences. The people who are still around.
That one shift changes how you think about work, about investing, about everything. You stop chasing a number you cannot name and start building toward something real.
So What Is "Enough"?
Obviously, this varies for each of us. But if there a common starting point for everyone, it’s this:
Start with your why.
Not a vague "I want financial freedom". Financial freedom for what? What life are you actually building toward, and what does it cost? Run the number honestly.
If it is achievable, work toward it with intention. If it is a stretch, that is useful information too. It might mean adjusting your lifestyle, not as failure, but as clarity.
And somewhere in that process, contentment tends to show up on its own. The real kind, where you know what you are building and why, and you are no longer running from something you cannot name.
The portfolio returns, the side income, the extra hustle. None of it means much if you lose yourself, or the people who matter most, along the way.
Money is a tool. Time is the thing worth protecting.
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And as always -
Patience builds wealth,
Bjorn
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