The seemingly elusive aspect of money

Product & Experience

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.”

Enough. I was stunned by the simple eloquence of that word - stunned for two reasons: first, because I have been given so much in my own life and, second, because Joseph Heller couldn’t have been more accurate.

For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit today on what enough entails.

The owner of a busy sandwich shop receives the figures for a possible second site. Revenue could nearly double. So could payroll. She would need a manager, a larger loan, weekend cover and another unreliable fridge.

Her accountant asks the unfashionable question: “What do you want the extra money for?”

She writes down three answers. Clear the mortgage sooner. Build a six-month reserve. Keep evenings with her family. The first shop can already fund two of them. A second site might accelerate the mortgage and put the evenings straight through the shredder.

For a week she tries to construct a version of expansion that protects all three. The rent requires longer opening hours. The staffing plan depends on her covering absences. The loan works, provided every sales forecast lands exactly. Her accountant laughs at that assumption.

She declines the lease.

Friends call this cautious. One competitor calls it a lack of ambition. Both treat expansion as the objective and her life as merely an input.

Six months later, the landlord offers a smaller unit with a shorter commitment. This version could serve the mortgage without consuming every Saturday. She reopens the figures and adds “enough” beside rent, wages and stock. It makes the calculation harder and the decision clearer.