How Much Money Is Enough? Plus, Why AI Won’t Replace Financial Advisors — with Jack Raines

**Scott Galloway** (0:01)
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**Scott Galloway** (1:22)
Welcome to Prof G on Personal Finance, a special episode where we're joined by Jack Raines, writer of the Young Money newsletter and author of Young Money, A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your 20s. Together, we'll discuss whether there's such a thing as enough wealth, how young people should save for a house in a high cost city, and whether wealth advisors survive AI. Jack, welcome.

**Jack Raines** (1:43)
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Scott.

**Scott Galloway** (1:45)
Thanks for being here. Everyone was really excited to have a young, knowledgeable financial person on. All right, let's bust right into it. Question one, our first question comes from Natanya Cranford on Instagram.
Is there such a thing as enough wealth? I still fly economy, but I can fly anywhere I want. Jack, is there such a thing as enough wealth?

**Jack Raines** (2:06)
I think the answer is yes, there is. The issue is humans are status-chasing monkeys, where once you get to what you thought was enough, there's always another level. So it's a question of, I'm from South Georgia, right? So my version of enough wealth growing up is a lot different than having lived in New York or San Francisco for the last four years.
So I mean, my answer to that is yes, there is. The question is, can you resist the chasing people who are one level ahead of you? Because is there an upper limit to wealth? No. Is there enough wealth? Yes, depending on where you set your standards for what enough means. For some people, it's several hundred thousand, a few million, tens of millions.
But it's much more, can you resist just chasing after other people that you view to be a little bit ahead of you?

**Scott Galloway** (2:56)
Yeah, I think about this a lot. I mean, on a very practical level, if you take your annual burn times 20, that's when you financially are probably set, and can start to enjoy life.
And also, I think a lot of people make a mistake.
I had some questions from some people who were retired, about how much money, and I asked about their life. I'm like, you should be spending more money. Unless you really do something stupid, you're fine. And my sense is, you guys don't travel. Spend some money, order the good wine. And I think about this a lot.
I think hoarding wealth is a virus that affects America. I just don't think there's any reason to have over a certain amount of wealth. I don't think you're going to get much happiness, if any, incremental happiness. I don't think you'd be less happy. I think this notion that billionaires are less happy than billionaires is also a myth. But what you said, what is it? Humans are memetic and that is, we don't think about satisfaction from what we have, we compare ourselves to others. And I have more money than most citizens, but I would like, and I stopped aggregating wealth or purposely trying to aggregate wealth after about 10 years ago. I either spend it or I give it away now, but I still occasionally regret not getting going more in on AI and trying to become a billionaire, because I would like to fund NPR, I would like to have more political influence and candidates. You can always find reasons. I still feel insecure and I would love to have, you live in a capitalist society, no matter how wealthy you are, they're always going to create incentives to want more, to keep you working and keep you productive. But I do think there's an art to saying, at some point, I at a minimum, want to focus on my relationships and get off this hamster wheel, and it's not easy. By the way, that's a story of privilege, because I think the vast majority of people are just trying to figure out a way to save enough to send their kids to college and not have medical debt. But yeah, that word enough is so powerful and it's consciously deciding yourself when is enough, and what would happen if I were fortunate enough to get to enough. Any closing thoughts on this?