Enough: A Child’s Perspective

The idea of Enough is one of my favorite topics to explore. There’s so much there. It’s one of those topics I can’t seem to get “enough” of, mainly because I don’t feel like we - as imperfect humans - can ever fully arrive at having mastered it (enter Lifestyle Creep).

My friend Jeremy has written about Enough on multiple occasions. There is very little - if anything - I can add to a topic he’s publicly explored so well over the past few years. I also attend a conference each year where Enough is talked about extensively. The phrase that is often used in that circle is “setting a financial finish line.” And it’s fascinating to me to hear from people who have attempted to proactively cap their lifestyle while being surrounded by a society that entices us all to pursue More - and to be discontent until we have it.

Yet, as much as I’ve explored and contemplated the concept of Enough, there was still a perspective I hadn’t uncovered. That is, until my five-year-old son - of all people - said something that made him sound wise beyond his years.

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For several months now my wife and I have been wanting to introduce our son to some very basic financial principles, as well as some ways he can earn money to save up for toys he wants to buy. So when a family member asked for Christmas gift ideas for him, we asked them to buy Financial Peace University for Kids (set aside your thoughts on Dave Ramsey for a moment).

One recent morning, the three of us - me, my wife, and our son - were sitting on the floor of our bedroom showing him the FPU books we were going to read together and the plastic coins they suggest using as a placeholder for real money. We shared that he was going to have the opportunity to complete chores to earn money, and that we were even going to kickstart his savings by paying him $1 to sit with us and complete the first lesson (you do what you have to do as parents sometimes!).

As we explained to him the concept of chores and how he would earn money in exchange for completing certain tasks, he paused for a moment before saying something I hope I never forget:

“Just don’t give me too much money, because my piggy bank is almost full already.”

Whoa.

What an innocent and healthy perspective. I feel like an entire book could be written from that single statement.

Here I am, hoping to teach my kids a thing or two about money, yet my son - who hasn’t even attended his first day of Kindergarten - casually drops one of the most thought-provoking statements I’ve heard in a while.

As I replayed his words over and over in my head, it was as if Proverbs 30:8-9 had already been stamped on his heart:

“…give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’”

As much as I’d like to say that I’ve prayed those very words to God, I most certainly have not.

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Weeks have passed since that morning, yet not a single day has gone by that I haven’t marinated on his words. He’s long forgotten that he ever said them. But I haven’t. And it’s caused me to do some serious reflecting.

While there is so much wisdom in the words he spoke, what amazes me the most might just be what he didn’t say.

He didn’t say, “I’m going to need a bigger piggy bank” (the elementary version of building a bigger barn). 

He didn’t say, “I’m going to need a second piggy bank.”

Rather, he simply said the equivalent of, “Don’t give me too much money, because I literally have no room for it.”

He didn’t have room for much more at the moment, and he wasn’t going to alter his circumstances or environment in an attempt to create additional space. What he already had was Enough.

This is coming from a five-year-old!

Meanwhile, I - the one responsible for teaching and training him on such matters - am guilty of scrolling through Zillow every few weeks eyeing a bigger house with more storage space. Space for our stuff. The stuff that’s not even important enough to sit out on display.

When I think about some of the other forms of capital, it often seems rather obvious when we’ve reached our limit. And, when we are operating as the healthiest version of ourselves, we acknowledge these limits and respond accordingly.

Exerted all the energy you can in a single day? No problem. Call it quits and head to bed.

Calendar full with no room to spare? Simple. Tell the person you don’t have the time this week and that you’ll need to look at the following week.

Reached the point where you’ve maxed out the attention you can give a task or project and struggle to stay focused? Understandable. Take a break and start fresh the next day.

Yet, with money, there is very little - if anything - we won’t do to make room for More.

Admittedly, it can be difficult to identify when we’ve reached Enough. There’s no giant flashing indicator to make it obvious that a limit has been reached. No alert message from our bank stating that our account has reached capacity. No iPhone notification saying “Your Money Storage is Full.”

However, perhaps a good starting point might be to simply ask ourselves if More could fit into our lives without it adding unnecessary stress and complexity (see Proverbs 15:16). Sometimes, the More money we have, the More things we accumulate. The More things we accumulate, the More there is to manage, protect, and insure. The More there is to manage, protect, and insure, the More time it takes to stay on top of it all. The More time it takes to stay on top of it all, the More stress we experience. See where I’m going with this? By no means is this always the case, but it happens more than we care to admit.

For my son, adding much More would result in trying to fit something into a space in which there simply wasn’t enough room. Once the limit had been reached, receiving and maintaining More would bring about some complexities that - to him - weren’t necessarily worth trying to navigate. I think there is a lot we can learn from such perspective.

Yes, I’m fully aware that I’m applying a very simple statement made by a child to a concept that is much more complicated.

But...is it really that complicated? Why can’t money be viewed as any other resource we accumulate up to the point when More of it just wouldn’t fit comfortably into our lives? What if our relationship with money actually was simple enough for a five-year-old to explain?

If it’s not already clear, this entire post is me speaking directly to myself. I’d be disingenuous if I said I had this figured out. I haven’t even defined what Enough is for me and my own family. However, my son’s reframing of the concept of Enough is making me think about it more now than ever before.

There are so many things I hope to teach him one day, but - for now - if I had to choose only one, it would be that he always remember the very lesson he taught me.

(Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash)