For much of our lives, building wealth serves specific goals: achieving stability, expanding possibilities, protecting the future. But what happens when having more no longer substantially changes the way we live? Then a different question arises: not how much more we can accumulate, but what we consider enough and what we want to do with what we have built.
The meaning of life
The philosopher, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl argued that human beings are not simply driven by pleasure or power, but by the “will to meaning.” We need to feel that what we do is leading somewhere and that our efforts are part of something greater than ourselves. In this way, money takes on a different meaning: it stops being a goal and becomes a vehicle. A means of supporting projects, caring for others, gaining independence, or devoting time to the things that matter to us.
From this perspective, the problem is not wealth itself, but turning its accumulation into a goal without an endpoint. Wealth can grow indefinitely; but our needs and our time are limited. That is where purpose comes in: not as a universal answer to what we should do with our money, but as a personal way of deciding when capital stops being the goal and starts serving what we consider important.
Against this backdrop, the idea of holistic wealth emerges: a form of prosperity measured not only in numbers, but also in quality of life. Wealth that is not traded on the markets or held in a bank account, but that also shapes our well-being. Because money can be an enabler, but it is not necessarily an end in itself.
The measure of enough
Money has one particular characteristic: it does not, in itself, tell us when we have enough. We can reach a goal and almost immediately replace it with another. What represented security yesterday may seem insufficient tomorrow. The figure changes; so does our baseline.
Defining what “enough” means doesn't mean giving up on ambition. It means giving it direction. It allows us to distinguish between continuing to build wealth because there is a purpose behind it and doing so simply because there is always another level to reach.
Switzerland offers an interesting context from which to observe another way of understanding prosperity. Stability, planning and quality of life coexist with a culture in which discretion is also part of the relationship with wealth. The point is not to turn it into a universal model, but to observe how the idea of prospering can encompass more than growth: continuity, balance and the ability to preserve what already has value.
Perhaps prosperity is not simply about continuing to grow what we have, but about knowing why we want to do so. Wealth can grow throughout our lives, but its meaning emerges when it finds a purpose beyond itself. Because one of the most challenging forms of wealth may also be one of the simplest to put into words: knowing what is enough for us and what we want to build from there.