In my previous Nano, “The Investment Everyone Wants”, I wrote about our endless search for an investment that delivers high returns with little or no volatility. Many of you loved this one and the responses to that post made me think about something even more interesting.

What if the investment everyone wants existed? Would we finally be satisfied?

Imagine an investment that consistently delivers 12 per cent annually without any uncomfortable declines. There are no frightening corrections, no sleepless nights and no uncertainty about what tomorrow might bring. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

Then your friend tells you he made 25 per cent last year. Another mentions an investment that doubled in eighteen months. Suddenly, your perfectly respectable 12 per cent begins to feel disappointing.

There is absolutely nothing that has changed about your investment. It continues doing exactly what you wanted it to do. Yet something has changed inside you.

Your investment hasn’t become worse. Your expectations have become bigger.

This is one more great paradox of investing. We believe we are searching for better returns, but often we are searching for the feeling that nobody else is doing better than us. This is a competition we can never win.

There will always be an investment delivering higher returns, a friend making more money or an opportunity we missed. Even if we could eliminate volatility, we would still have to deal with comparison, envy, regret and the endless temptation to want more.

The real problem then was never simply the absence of that magical investment. It was our belief that finding it would finally make us content.

This is why I believe the most important investment question is not, “What is the highest return I can earn?” It is, “What return do I actually need to live the life I want?”

Once you know what enough looks like, you no longer need every investment to be extraordinary. You simply need your financial life to be extraordinary.

The investment everyone wants may not exist. However, the financial life you truly want can.