How Much Is Just Enough?
On nest eggs.
Last week, the New York Times asked an assorted group of people a very simple question: how big do you want your nest egg to be?
The answer to this question varies, obviously, ranging from $20 million to just $36,000 and everything in between. The numbers on the higher end of the spectrum are less interesting to me — when asked a hypothetical question about how much money one might desire as their nest egg, it seems like the easy way out to just pick a big number and dream. Of course a $20 million nest egg would be appealing; but it’s almost too much money to have. Remember how Johnny Depp spent $2 million a month on wine and foolishness?
But $36,000 a year as a fixed income is nothing to sneeze at, either. Susan Sosnow, a landlord and real estate investor, named that figure as her Number. Her explanation for why that number is so low makes a lot of sense.
And then there is Susan Sosnow, a real estate investor and landlord. All Ms. Sosnow, 49, needs to feel secure is $36,000 a year. Really. She nets a fraction of that as a landlord.
Explaining the relatively low figure, she said: “I’m not interested in traveling; I’m interested in creating paradise at home, Candyland. I’m still driving the ’99 Ford Escort wagon I bought for $3,200 cash in 2004. But sometimes it sits in my driveway for a week and I just ride my bike around.”
Geography matters; Sosnow lives in Florida, where the cost of living isn’t too high. $36,000 a year wouldn’t go very far in New York, but there are other places in this country where it would be just fine.
Having a nest egg on the higher end of the spectrum sounds nice, too, but there has to be some point when that money is just there to have and not to use. The simple things — a bike, a home, a car that still runs — are nice, too. Of course, a nest egg and the notion of “enough” differs for everyone. Money is personal; my “more than enough” is someone else’s “not enough at all.” I might want more than $36,000 a year as a nest egg, but nothing too crazy above it. Enough to make my home a nice one, but not so much that I don’t feel like I never have to work again.
What’s your nest egg? How much, for you, is just enough?
