One of the key questions we ask of our clients is – what does ‘having enough’ mean to you?

It’s not an easy question to answer for a few reasons:

• Putting a limit on our financial aspirations is generally frowned upon (but not much as being public with our financial aspirations is!)

• There’s nothing to anchor your answer in the question

• It’s not something we often think about in our day to day lives.

But in a lot of ways it’s the central question to all good financial advice.

Once you’ve defined what your ‘enough’ is – be it a certain level of income each year, or money in the bank, or assets behind you, or vintage items in your collection – then we can help you chase it down.

It allows us to help you to make the intangible, tangible.

It also gives you a starting point for some big decisions and discussions – which we obviously love!

For instance, let’s say you’ve decided that if you could just receive $50,000 a year as an income, without working, then that would be enough.

It would allow you the time to indulge in your real passions – gardening and volunteer work at the local library.

It would cover your bills and leave you with enough money each year to visit your kids in Broome.

Once we know this, we can work backwards and tell you:

• How much extra you need to pay off your debts to achieve this

• When’s a reasonable deadline for achieving this

• Some trade-offs you can make now to reach your ‘enough’ (so you can decide whether or not these trade-offs are worth making)

• What you need in assets to make this happen

• Use it to build your financial context – of course you can buy that new car, but you need to know it’s going to push your ‘enough’ out by another three years. If that’s not useful information, I’m not sure what is.

• The answer to one of the common questions we hear – should I pay extra money off the mortgage, or put it into super?

Most importantly, we can give you a tangible goal to work towards, and a series of milestones to help you find your way there.

That’s the kind of financial guidance we love to give – and that can make a real difference to somebody’s life.