Therefore, my – new and improved – fulfillment curve (v2.0). Starting somewhere on the left, where one might have too little money to spend on essentials (being broke) – eventually one can spend enough to start covering the essentials and fulfillment starts to increase exponentially. This continues when spending money on comforts – beyond the essential needs – and start to flatten off when starting to spend on luxury goods and services. On the top of the curve, you’ll find the goldilocks zone at the top where you’ll spend ‘enough’. Beyond this point, one will reach the ‘overconsumption’ (red) zone. As you spend more, it will lead to more clutter, make life unnecessarily complex, creating more financial obligations and eventually lead again to you being broke, but now also miserable as this is a self-made situation, which could have been avoided. Also this last stage will not go exponentially and the curve will flatten out before reaching the final stage.
This curve also illustrates that, for instance, buying more house than you can afford might cause you to slide down to being broke and miserable – and that ‘following the Joneses’ really can do some damage to your personal happiness.