Lets all strive to be "Normal Rich"

About eight months ago, I wrote a post here about how my goals as a real estate investor have changed.

For years, the goal was accumulation. My original target was 10 doors producing $500 per month each. Eventually we surpassed that goal, and I found myself thinking less about how much more we could acquire and more about what we were actually trying to accomplish.

That led me to set a new goal pay off our primary residence by September 27, 2028, my 45th birthday.

At the time, that felt almost counterintuitive. I'm a real estate investor. We're taught to understand and use leverage. Why would I take capital and use it to pay off relatively inexpensive debt instead of investing it?

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn't trying to maximize my net worth anymore. I was trying to maximize freedom while minimizing the number of things that could disrupt our family's life.

Recently I came across something that gave me an even clearer picture of what that could look like.

An Arizona real estate agent, Templeton Walker, has been talking on social media about what he calls "Normal Rich."

The idea is pretty simple:

Paid for primary residence.
No debt.
$2 million invested.

His example assumes that $2 million produces a 10% return, or roughly $200,000 per year. At that point, his argument is that you can live a pretty incredible "normal" life. You can own a nice home, drive a nice vehicle, take vacations, spend time with your family, and most importantly, become much more intentional about what you do with your time.

That really resonated with me.

Is $2 million plus a paid off house attainable for everyone? Probably not. But compared with so much of what we see online 100 doors, $10 million net worth, private jets, exotic cars, constantly scaling it feels like a surprisingly attainable target for someone who is willing to work hard, invest consistently, delay gratification, and give it enough time.

It has caused me to modify my own goal again.

The house payoff hasn't changed. September 27, 2028 is still the target, and based on our current earnings and savings rate, we're on track.

What has changed is how I'm thinking about the bigger finish line.

I don't necessarily want the biggest portfolio I can build. I want enough productive assets, a paid-for home, no meaningful debt, and enough income that my family and I can make decisions based primarily on how we want to spend our time rather than how much money those decisions produce.

Maybe that's $2 million. Maybe the number ends up being different for us. And because much of our wealth is in real estate, our version probably won't look exactly like someone else's.

But I really like the concept.

At some point, the goal has to change from building more to building enough.

I'm curious what everyone else thinks. Do you have an actual "enough" number, or are you still focused on accumulating as much as possible?