How Much Is Enough?

The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. (1 Timothy 6:10)

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5)

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. (Philippians 4:12)

The following information is from Randy Alcorn's book, Money, Possessions and Eternity.

The problem is not the depravity of money. It's the depravity of man.
Money is power. It's not intrinsically evil, but it is intrinsically dangerous.
"Money may be temporarily under my control. But I must regard it as a wild beast, with power to turn on me and others if I drop my guard. Money must not call the shots.... God is my master, and money is at His disposal. I must discern not what money says, but what God says. Money may be a factor, but it is never the factor. God, not money, is sovereign. Money—whether by its presence or absence—must never rule my life."
Temporal sacrifices will pay off in eternity and temporal indulgences will cost in eternity.
"It takes time to hover over our things, and that time must come from elsewhere—for instance, from time spent cultivating intimacy with God, from time spent in his Word and prayer, time spent visiting and ministering to the needy, and time spent developing relationships with people who need Christ. Every item I add to my possessions is one more thing to think about, talk about, clean, repair, display, rearrange, and replace when it goes bad."
"If we can pass things through our hands to others, or leave them at a moment's notice, only then are they safe in our possession. Otherwise we will fix our eyes on them rather than Jesus."

And so it is that when a man walks along a road, the lighter he travels, the happier he is; equally, on this journey of life, a man is more blessed if he does not pant beneath a burden of riches.

—Tertullian

Let temporal things serve your use, but the eternal be the object of your desire.

—Thomas a Kempis

Can a man be poor if he is free from want, if he does not covet the belongings of others, if he is rich in the possession of God? Rather, he is poor who possesses much but still craves for more.

—Tertullian

So what's all that stuff beyond enough? Clutter, that's what! Clutter is anything that is excess—for you. It's whatever you have that doesn't serve you, yet takes up space in your world. To let go of clutter, then, is not deprivation, it's lightening up and opening up space for something new to happen. As self-evident as these ideas may be, many people experience a subtle (or not so subtle) resistance to letting them in. That is why downscaling, frugality and thrift sound like deprivation, lack and need. On the contrary! Enough is a wide and stable plateau. It is a place of alertness, creativity and freedom. From this place, being suffocated under a mountain of clutter that must be stored, cleaned, moved, gotten rid of and paid for on time is a fate worse than debt.

—From Your Money or Your Life