How much money is enough?

Question 11032.

Asking how much is enough money is one of the few financial questions the Bible answers directly, and the answer is uncomfortable enough that most of us prefer to keep the question vague.

We are far more willing to ask how to earn well, give wisely or invest sensibly. Those are good questions. But they all sit downstream of a prior one, and until a Christian has settled what counts as enough money he will find that no amount ever does.

Scripture answers the question of enough money

Paul is remarkably specific. “But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.” That is the biblical baseline. Food and covering. He is not describing a vow of poverty for the especially holy; he is writing to an ordinary church about ordinary expectations.

Agur’s prayer in Proverbs 30 asks for neither poverty nor riches, but only the food that is needful, and gives the reasoning: too much and I may deny God, too little and I may steal and profane his name. He understood that both ends of the scale carry spiritual danger.

The Greek word Paul uses for contentment, autarkeia, meant self-sufficiency in the philosophy of the day. Paul takes the word and relocates its source. The Christian is not sufficient in himself; he is sufficient because of what he already has in God.

Why we never feel we have enough money

Ecclesiastes diagnoses it precisely: he who loves money will not be satisfied with money. That is not a warning about a particular income bracket. It is a description of how desire works. Satisfaction recedes as you approach it, which is why every income level contains people who feel stretched.

Comparison does most of the damage. Very few people conclude they have enough money by examining their own circumstances. They conclude it, or fail to, by looking sideways. Change the people you look at and you change your sense of sufficiency without a penny moving.

And there is a genuine spiritual dimension. Jesus said no one can serve God and money, and he used the word master. Money is not neutral in his account of it. It applies for the position, and it interviews well.

Enough money is not the same as the same amount for everyone

This is where wisdom is needed rather than a formula. A man supporting elderly parents, a family with a disabled child, a couple in London and a couple in rural Wales are not working with the same figures. Scripture gives a principle and a direction of travel, not a number.

Nor does the Bible condemn wealth as such. Abraham was rich. Job was restored to abundance. Lydia had a business. Paul does not tell the rich to stop being rich; he tells them not to be haughty, not to set their hope on uncertain riches, and to be rich in good works.

What Scripture consistently condemns is the love of money, hoarding, injustice in acquiring it and indifference to the poor. The question is never simply how much sits in the account but what grip it has and what it is doing.

The practical test

Here is the test I use on myself. Can I give generously without anxiety? Do I make decisions differently because of what I might lose? Would a significant financial reversal shake my sense of who I am? Those questions expose the grip more reliably than any spreadsheet.

A second test is direction. Over the last five years, has my giving risen faster than my spending? If income has grown and giving has stayed flat, then whatever I say about contentment, my practice says the extra was for me. I have written more on this where I ask what the Bible says about giving.

A third is honesty about lifestyle creep. Almost nobody decides to raise their standard of living permanently. It happens by a series of small, reasonable decisions, each of which quietly redefines what enough money means.

Contentment is learned, not discovered

Paul says he learned contentment, in Philippians 4:11-13, and the word implies a process with setbacks. He learned it in plenty and in hunger, which means his contentment was not the by-product of a comfortable season. It was trained into him by God through both.

This should encourage anyone who finds contentment elusive. It is not a temperament some people are born with. It is a discipline, and disciplines respond to practice. Deliberate gratitude, deliberate generosity and deliberate simplicity all work on it over time.

It also means we should be patient with ourselves and each other. A believer who is anxious about money is not necessarily faithless. He may simply be at an earlier stage of the same lesson Paul took years to learn.

Enough money and the danger at both ends

Agur’s prayer in Proverbs 30 is unusual in Scripture because it asks God to keep him out of both ditches. Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that is needful for me. He names the specific danger at each end, and both are spiritual rather than financial.

Too much and I may be full and deny you, and say who is the Lord. Wealth insulates. It removes the daily experience of dependence, and a person who has not needed God for anything practical in twenty years often finds prayer has gone thin without knowing when it happened. Having enough money can quietly cost you something.

Too little and I may steal and profane the name of my God. Poverty pressures. It puts people in situations where integrity becomes expensive, and anyone who has pastored through genuine hardship knows that temptation looks different when the electricity is about to be cut off. Neither ditch is safe, which is why the prayer asks for the road between them.

Generosity is how we hold enough money loosely

The consistent New Testament answer to the grip of money is not asceticism but generosity. Paul tells the rich in 1 Timothy 6 to be rich in good works, generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future. Giving is presented as the way to hold wealth safely.

This is why I get nervous when a believer’s financial plan has no line for generosity in it. It is not that God needs the money. It is that a person who never gives is training himself to grip, and grip is the disposition that turns having enough money into never having enough. 2 Corinthians 9:7 has God loving a cheerful giver, and cheerfulness is the mark of a hand that has learned to open.

The Macedonians in 2 Corinthians 8 gave out of extreme poverty and begged for the privilege. Whatever they had, it was not surplus, and their giving is presented as evidence of grace rather than of prosperity. That should permanently disconnect generosity from having arrived at some threshold first.

Talking about money in the church

British churches are famously reticent about money, and the reticence does real harm. Jesus talked about it constantly, more than about heaven or hell, and he did so because he understood how thoroughly it competes for the human heart. Our silence is politeness rather than wisdom.

What I would want in a healthy congregation is honest, unembarrassed, non-manipulative teaching about money, and enough trust between believers that someone in difficulty can say so. A church where nobody knows that a family is choosing between heating and food is not a church that can act like one.

It also helps ordinary people work out what enough money looks like for them. Most of us calibrate by looking sideways, and if the only people we look at are wealthier than us, the answer will always be more. A congregation that spans incomes and talks openly is a gift here, and it connects to what I say about work and provision.

One final thought. The question of enough money is answered differently at different stages of life, and revisiting it every few years is healthy. What was needed with three children at home is not what is needed at sixty, and a household that never revisits the figure tends to keep spending at the old level long after the reason for it has gone.

So, now what?

Write down a figure. Not a fantasy figure, a real one: what your household actually needs to live on with reasonable provision. Most people have never done this, and the exercise alone is clarifying. Everything above that figure is now a stewardship question rather than a survival question.

Then decide in advance what happens to future increases. If you settle now that a proportion of any rise goes to giving before it reaches your standard of living, you will have removed the single most common route by which enough money becomes never enough.

And practise thanksgiving on purpose. Contentment grows where gratitude is spoken. What would change if you began this week by naming what you already have rather than what you are still waiting for?

“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.'”

Hebrews 13:5 (ESV)