The Number You're Afraid to Write Down

I went for a run last week with a friend. Cold morning. The kind where your lungs burn for the first mile before your body figures out what's happening.

He's a business owner. Smart. Successful by most measures. He has products in the market, ideas in the pipeline, and more opportunities than he can pursue. He doesn't need the money. Not really. Not anymore.

So I asked him a simple question: What does a good life look like ten years from now?

He couldn't answer it.

Then I asked: What's your number? The amount that would let you stop building if you wanted to. The nest egg. The finish line.

He really couldn't answer that one.

The Unnamed Target

Here's what struck me. This is someone who builds businesses. He sets targets, measures results, adjusts strategy. Structure and accountability are how he operates. But when it comes to his own financial life, he won't commit a number to paper.

At first, he said it was complicated. Too many variables. Markets change. Needs evolve. Fair enough.

But as we kept running, he got more honest. He said the number felt impossible to pin down because he didn't know what he was aiming for. "Enough" felt abstract. "Comfortable" felt vague. At one point he used a phrase I hear more often than you'd expect from people in his position: "F.U. money."

I asked him who he was saying it to.

He laughed. Then he got quiet.

The Treadmill That Never Stops

In 1971, psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell introduced a concept they called the "hedonic treadmill." Their research showed something counterintuitive: people tend to return to a stable level of happiness regardless of major positive or negative life events.

They studied lottery winners and found that after the initial thrill faded, winners returned to roughly the same happiness levels they had before the windfall. The money stopped feeling special. The new normal became just normal.

Here's why this matters for my friend: the treadmill explains why high achievers keep moving goalposts. When you reach a milestone you once aspired to, that level becomes your new baseline. What used to feel extraordinary now feels standard. You need more to feel the same level of satisfaction.

My friend has done well. Objectively well. But his current success would have seemed extraordinary to the version of himself from ten years ago. The problem is that he's not comparing himself to that earlier version. He's comparing himself to some future version that finally feels like he's "made it."

Without naming a number, the goalpost moves forever. "Make it big" is a target that recedes the closer you get. You can't hit a number you won't write down. And some part of you knows that even if you did hit it, the treadmill would keep running.

The Real Reason the Number Stays Blank

Here's what I think was really happening on that run.

My friend isn't bad at math. He's avoiding accountability. If he writes down a number and achieves it, then what? Who is he when he's not building? What does he do with his energy, his identity, his days?

The endless projects and new ideas aren't procrastination. They're protection. As long as the target stays undefined, he never has to confront the weight of hitting it.

This is common among builders.

The skills that create wealth (relentless drive, pattern recognition, bias toward action) are the same skills that make "enough" feel like a foreign concept. Stopping isn't in the vocabulary. Completion feels like loss.

So the number stays unwritten. And the game continues with no finish line.

What Clarity Actually Requires

I'm not going to pretend there's an easy answer here. Writing down your number isn't just a math problem. It's an identity problem. It forces questions most people spend years avoiding:

• What am I actually working toward?

• Whose definition of success am I chasing?

• What would I do with my time if I didn't have to do anything?

• Who am I if I'm not building?

These aren't spreadsheet questions. But until you engage with them, no financial plan will feel real. You'll keep moving the target because you never committed to one.

The number isn't sacred. It can change as life changes. But having one, even a working draft, creates something powerful: a reference point. A way to measure progress. A definition of "enough" that belongs to you instead of some unnamed future version of yourself.

A Question Worth Sitting With

If you recognize yourself in my friend's story, here's something worth considering.

• What would change if you wrote down a number tomorrow?

Not the perfect number. Not the final number. Just a number that represented "enough" by your own definition.

And if you can't write it down, ask yourself why. Is it really about the math? Or is it about what that clarity would require you to confront?

Sometimes the hardest financial question isn't how to grow your wealth. It's deciding what it's for.

If you're wrestling with this, I'm happy to talk it through. As a fee-only fiduciary, my first goal is clarity, not a sale.

Learn about our Financial Assessment

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