How much money is 'enough'?

the other thing is... and don't know if this has ever been discussed in a thread: on my mother's side my family has a lot of money, but i have already been written out of wills for a variety of reasons. that's fine with me. i don't like them. and then there's that my dad is about 40 million in debt (on purpose-- company startup and research money) with the possibility of earning hundreds of millions of dollars if things pan out. he says his only goal is to leave me enough money that no one in our family would ever have to do a job they don't want to do ever again (which translates to spending their whole lives in school, to him). i do not feel guilty about wanting this. is that bad?

After all, Bill Gates's life is very different today than what it would be if he had a mere $100 million at his disposal. And if he had $10 trillion, his life would different still - not in terms of luxury, but in terms of power.

But it appears that the answers you're getting are more in response to the implied question that lies between the two that were asked - how much money do you imagine you would need to satisfy your future desires?

As Michael White pointed out, desires have a way of outpacing the expansion of one's means. Money is a very poor measure of satisfaction and setting one's life goals in terms of money is a great way to lead to sterility of thought and action.

Incidentally, $1 million is a nice round figure and would do me fine.

several million would enable me to buy several properties which i would then either let out to others or live in depending on where they were. my dream is to buy huge rundown factories in both London and New York and convert them into space for struggling artists with bar, club and other cool shit attached. really i'd just like to travel around parts of the world whenever i chose.

I could spend and give away an inordinate amount of money if I hit the lotto.

per annum we've settled on around €40k PA each probably doing the job what with the no kids and the lack of student or any other debt

how about you now ilx?

reckon if i had £25k a year i wd live like a prince

In London, idk, probably at least twice as much as i currently earn. I'd get by fine elsewhere on £30k - £35k.

but uncle jack - no matter how much you got, how do you turn your back on more?