Why More Money Doesn’t Solve the Problem
The number grows but the uncertainty doesn’t go away
It Doesn’t Feel Like We Thought It Would
There’s a point where your investments are growing, your savings are consistent, and things are clearly moving in the right direction.
If you're not here yet, you will be. When you get there, you’ll expect it to feel different than it does. More certain. More settled. Like something has been figured out.
I remember the first time our investments hit $100K. I noticed it, felt good about it, and mentally moved on to $250K. That came and went too. On to the next.
I’m not going to pretend each milestone didn’t bring real excitement. But each one also left the same question sitting there.
The uncertainty didn’t go away. It just changed.
The Uncertainty Doesn’t Disappear
Early on, the uncertainty is fairly straightforward.
Will I be okay? Am I saving enough?
That starts to ease as savings grow. There’s more margin, more distance from a bad situation. But something else begins to take its place.
A few years after my wife and I moved into our home, things started to feel more settled. We had built something. The basics were covered. And that’s when we started having real conversations about what we were actually building toward.
We expected it to be easy to identify at that point. It wasn’t.
We disagreed here and there. Had different priorities occasionally. Still do. But we knew it was important to start looking at things with more intention, even without a clear answer.
The uncertainty hadn’t disappeared. It had shifted. From whether we’d be okay, to what okay was actually supposed to look like.
When the Decisions Change
As the margin grows, the decisions start to look different. The question moves from whether to spend to which options to pursue.
I’ve noticed this when trying to keep the pedal down on saving. When you’ve built a cushion and feel more secure, there’s a pull toward letting up a little. Maybe that’s even the right move at some point. But it’s easy to get distracted from actual goals when there’s money that could go toward extras instead of just covering the basics.
Adding another trip is easy to justify when you’re ahead of your savings target. But that assumes things will keep moving in a straight line. Investment returns, health, and circumstances rarely do.
The other place I’ve felt this is the home. My wife and I keep coming back to whether we should upgrade. We've stayed in our current place intentionally. The lower fixed costs give us the flexibility we both value. But a bigger home has become something we could actually make work now. That possibility has a pull to it that didn't exist before.
What Actually Changes
The decisions stayed the same. Having more cushion changed how I was willing to answer them. The bigger question of what we're actually building toward is still just as open as it ever was.
I used to be pretty rigid about spending, and saw it as something to minimize. My wife was the one with champagne tastes. I was the one trying to keep us on a beer budget.
I’m not sure exactly what shifted. Maybe it was Covid or my more recent back flare-ups that changed the way I thought about time. Maybe it’s where we sit financially now and the cushion that comes with it. Maybe my wife has rubbed off on me more than I’ve admitted.
Probably all of it.
I’m still always going to prioritize the future. That hasn’t changed. But I’ve found a more balanced approach with the present than I had ten years ago.
For years I kept our travel budget flat. Most of every raise or bonus went toward the future. More into savings, more into the brokerage account. The last couple of years that’s changed. A bigger portion of pay raises have started going toward the travel budget instead.
Some of it was practical. Inflation and preferences for slightly nicer places had made the old number feel tight. But some of it was intentional. A conscious decision to make sure we were investing in now too, and not just a future version of retirement where we hoped to travel. Our bonuses still mostly get deferred to the future. But the raises shifted, and that feels more aligned with where we are and what we want.
The number still matters. I just started paying more attention to what it was actually for.
More money gave me the ability to ask that question more honestly. It didn’t answer it.
That part is still mine to figure out.
— Brad
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This is meant to help you think through financial decisions and tradeoffs—not tell you exactly what to do. It’s general in nature and not personalized advice.