Page 44 - Psychology of Money - Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

John Bogle, the Vanguard founder who passed away in 2019, once told a
COBACOBA
story about money that highlights something we don’t think about enough:

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.

It’s so smart, and so powerful.

Let me offer two examples of the dangers of not having enough, and what
they can teach us.

Rajat Gupta was born in Kolkata and orphaned as a teenager. People talk
about the privileged few who begin life on third base. Gupta couldn’t even
see the baseball stadium.

What he went on to achieve from those beginnings was simply phenomenal.

By his mid 40s Gupta was CEO of McKinsey, the world’s most prestigious

consulting firm. He retired in 2007 to take on roles with the United Nations
and the World Economic Forum. He partnered on philanthropic work with