How to Balance Enjoying Life While Building Wealth
One of the most common questions successful professionals wrestle with is:
How much should I save, and how much can I actually spend?
It's an understandable question.
You want to build wealth, prepare for retirement, and make smart financial decisions.
But you also want to:
- travel
- buy the house you want
- spend time with your family
- help your children
- renovate your home
- enjoy the income you've worked hard to earn
The answer isn't to save every dollar possible.
And it isn't to spend whatever is left in your checking account.
The goal is to create a financial system that tells you what you need to save to stay on track—and gives you the confidence to enjoy the rest.
At Apeiron Planning Partners, we often come back to a simple idea:
You can usually do anything. You just can't do everything.
Financial planning helps you understand the difference.
How Much Should You Save?
There is no savings rate that works for every household at every stage of life.
But one framework we often use is what we call the 60% Solution.
The general idea is to keep your committed or fixed expenses around 60% of your income, leaving the remaining portion available for:
- saving and investing
- short-term goals
- travel and lifestyle spending
- charitable giving
- other priorities
It's a framework—not a commandment.
That's an important distinction.
Because real life doesn't happen in perfectly consistent 12-month increments.
Your Savings Rate Should Change Throughout Your Life
Imagine you're 52.
Your income is strong, but you simultaneously have:
- two kids in college
- a major home renovation
- higher-than-normal family expenses
Your savings rate might temporarily fall to 10%.
Is that a problem?
Maybe not.
If you spent the previous 20 years saving aggressively, have accumulated substantial retirement assets, and know you're still on track for your long-term goals, reducing savings for a couple of years may be completely reasonable.
That's what financial planning should help determine.
The goal isn't:
“How do I maximize my savings rate every single year?”
It's:
“Are the decisions we're making today compatible with the future we want?”
Those are very different questions.
Financial Planning Doesn't Eliminate Tradeoffs
This is one of the biggest misconceptions about financial planning.
Having a financial plan doesn't mean you suddenly get to have everything.
There are still tradeoffs.
You might be able to:
- buy the $1.5 million house
- retire at 55
- fully fund college for three children
- purchase a vacation home
- travel extensively
- leave several million dollars to your children
But doing all of them simultaneously may not work.
A good financial plan lets you see that.
Instead of being told:
“You can't afford the house.”
you can have a much more useful conversation:
“You can buy the house. Here's what it could mean for your retirement date, savings rate, and other goals.”
Now you can decide whether the tradeoff is worth it.
That's far more useful than a generic rule telling you how much you're allowed to spend.
High Earners Usually Aren't Trying to Overspend
We work with plenty of successful professionals who worry they're spending too much.
Sometimes they are.
But usually, they're not reckless spenders.
The bigger problem is that they don't have a system protecting them from lifestyle creep.
Income comes in.
The 401(k) gets maxed out.
Bills get paid.
Whatever accumulates in checking eventually gets spent, invested, or moved somewhere else.
Then a bonus arrives.
Maybe stock vests.
Income increases.
Expenses gradually increase with it.
Nothing necessarily feels irresponsible.
But there isn't a clear mechanism answering:
“How much of this money are we actually supposed to be keeping?”
That's why simply maximizing your 401(k) isn't a complete financial system.
Pay Yourself Too
We developed a framework we call Pay Yourself Too to solve exactly this problem.
Traditional budgeting often looks something like:
Income → Spending → Save what's left
We prefer turning that around.
First, determine what your lifestyle actually costs.
Then establish a comfortable amount that regularly flows into your checking account.
Everything above the amount needed for your cash reserve can automatically move toward investing and other goals.
Instead of constantly asking:
“Did we spend too much this month?”
you've already protected the amount that needs to be saved.
That's what allows the rest to become guilt-free spending.
You don't have to make 100 good financial decisions every month.
The system does most of the work for you.
High Income Makes a System Even More Important
This becomes particularly valuable as income grows.
Someone earning $300,000 may not actually receive $300,000 as 24 predictable paychecks.
Compensation may include:
- salary
- annual bonuses
- commissions
- RSUs
- ESPPs
- other equity compensation
Without a system, every large inflow creates another decision.
Should we invest the bonus?
Pay down the mortgage?
Leave it in cash?
Take the vacation?
Buy something?
Increase our lifestyle?
That's one reason we think about what high earners should do with a bonus as part of a broader financial system rather than as an isolated decision.
Automation reduces the number of decisions you have to make.
Build Money You Can Actually Use Before Retirement
Another mistake high earners make is assuming that maximizing retirement accounts means they're doing everything right.
Someone may have:
- $1 million in a 401(k)
- $100,000 in cash
- very little invested anywhere else
On paper, they're building wealth.
But most of life doesn't happen at age 65.
Maybe you want to:
- buy a different house
- renovate
- take a sabbatical
- help your children
- start a business
- retire early
- make a major purchase
That's why we frequently encourage high earners to consider building what we call the mid-term account—typically a taxable brokerage account sitting between cash and long-term retirement savings.
We explain that strategy in Why High Earners Need a Brokerage Account Beyond Their 401(k).
The purpose isn't just maximizing investment returns.
It's creating options.
Your House Is Often the Biggest Tradeoff
For many of the families we work with, travel isn't what changes the financial plan.
Housing can.
A few nice vacations generally don't create the same long-term financial impact as permanently adding thousands of dollars to monthly fixed expenses.
Consider two households earning the same amount.
One chooses a substantially more expensive house.
They may need to:
- save less
- work longer
- maintain a higher income
- accept less flexibility elsewhere
That doesn't mean buying the larger house is wrong.
They may love the neighborhood.
They may want the schools.
They may spend most of their free time at home.
The house may be incredibly important to them.
Then it could be a completely reasonable tradeoff.
But they should understand what they're trading for it.
That's why our approach to how much house you can afford isn't simply based on what a lender will approve.
It's about how the purchase interacts with the rest of your life.
Sometimes Working Longer Is a Great Tradeoff
Retiring as early as humanly possible isn't everyone's goal.
Imagine you're 55 and the plan says you could retire at 60.
But you'd really like to buy the house you've always wanted.
Maybe the tradeoff means working until 63 instead.
Is that bad?
Not necessarily.
If you enjoy your career and value the house more than three additional years of retirement, you may happily make that exchange.
Another person might say:
“Absolutely not. Having control over my time at 60 matters far more to me than another house.”
Same numbers.
Different answer.
That's why personal finance is personal.
When Can You Spend Without Feeling Guilty?
The objective isn't to accumulate the largest possible account balance.
Money should ultimately support your life.
Once you understand:
- what you're spending
- what you're saving
- whether you're on track for retirement
- what major future goals require
- how much liquidity you need
- what tradeoffs you're making
spending becomes much easier.
You don't need permission from a financial advisor to take a vacation or buy something you enjoy.
The advisor's job is to help you understand the best way to fund it and what the decision means for everything else.
If the plan says you can afford it, sometimes the appropriate financial advice is very simple:
Go enjoy the money.
The Goal Isn't to Die With the Most Money
Henry David Thoreau wrote:
“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”
That's much closer to how we think about wealth than simply maximizing a balance sheet.
There's little value in spending 40 years accumulating money you were perpetually afraid to use.
We've explored that philosophy further in our article about Die With Zero and the idea of using money intentionally throughout your life.
That doesn't mean recklessly spending everything.
It means recognizing that money has a purpose.
Retirement matters.
So does today.
A Good Financial System Should Eventually Feel Boring
One of the best outcomes of financial planning is reaching the point where you don't need to constantly think about money.
Your cash reserve has a target.
Your retirement contributions happen automatically.
Your mid-term investments happen automatically.
Large inflows have a destination.
You understand what your lifestyle costs.
And periodically, the plan gets updated as life changes.
Then you can largely go live your life.
That's much different from constantly wondering:
“Are we spending too much?”
or:
“Should we be saving more?”
The system answers much of that for you.
The Bottom Line
Balancing enjoying life with building wealth isn't about finding the perfect savings percentage.
It's about creating a financial system that allows you to make informed tradeoffs.
Some years you may save aggressively.
Other years, life may be expensive.
You may buy the house.
Pay for college.
Take the trip.
Work a few years longer.
Retire earlier.
None of those decisions exists in isolation.
A good financial plan helps you understand what each decision means for the others.
Because ultimately:
You can usually do anything. You just can't do everything.
The purpose of planning is deciding which things matter enough to choose.
If you want help building a financial system around the life you're actually trying to create, you can start a conversation with Apeiron Planning Partners.