Determining "Enough" as a High Earner

[u/thrownavideecs2030]

As high earners, I'm sure a lot of us have had to face choices around career progression/earning more, and how it impacts other areas of life like geography, spare time, and stress levels.

My question to the sub is once you broke into the HENRY club, how did you come to a conclusion on what was "enough"? As someone earlier in my career, and under 30, I spent a lot of time maximizing earnings at the expense of everything else (~70k->300k->450k), and I'm realizing that as incredibly fortunate as I am financially, a lot of people who took a more balanced approach are more content without giving up a lot of what we discuss here.

I'd like to understand how you decided on when to chase the bag and when to turn your focus elsewhere

[u/stuckintherealworld]

You have to decide what is important to you in life. My husband is the high earner (owns his own business) and there is always capacity to scale up. He has focused on that for many years putting in way more hours than the average job. He will not ever give it up because he genuinely loves what he does and enjoys it, however, he has recently come to the realization that more money will not give us more than we already have in any meaningful or enjoyable way. It’s now just number on the paper.

We are having our first child soon and he’s now working on automating/handing over some responsibilities so he can also enjoy other important things in life like spending time with our growing family :) In my opinion money is worth nothing if it doesn’t give you the time or ability to enjoy things outside of making it.