In 1995, researchers surveyed 257 people at Harvard with a strange choice.

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while everyone around you earns $25,000? Or earn $100,000 while everyone around you earns $200,000?

Around half chose the first option. They gave up double the income just to feel ahead of the people around them.

For nearly a decade in Banking, I quietly asked myself a version of the same question.

Now I hear it from clients all over the world. It is the single most common question in my coaching work.

And it almost never comes from people who are behind.

It comes from high-performers who are, on paper, doing everything right.

So today I want to show you why "am I on track compared to others" is a question you cannot win. And what to measure instead.

The benchmarks that promise an answer

When I first went looking for an answer, I found no shortage of formulas.

​Fidelity's widely quoted guideline says to aim for one times your salary saved by 30, three times by 40, six times by 50, and ten times by 67. Other rules tell you to hold three to six months of expenses as an emergency fund, or to split your income 50/30/20.

I read all of them. And every time, I used to find the same 3 problems:

1. Whose life are these numbers built for? Almost all research is US-based and refers to US dollars. Fidelity's multiples assume a US retirement at 67, a specific savings rate, and no pension. Fidelity itself describes the multiplier as only "one source of information" for assessing your needs.
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   As someone raised outside of the US, the assumptions made by these articles have never fit me. They've left me with more questions than clarity.
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2. Then what? Suppose you check and you do have three times your salary saved. What do you actually do with that information on Monday morning? A benchmark tells you where you stand. It gives you no next move.
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3. Even if you "pass", what does passing give you? I remember thinking: if the number says I'm doing well, does that mean I keep going exactly as I am? Does it mean I'm allowed to change something? It never gave me the safety I was really looking for.

Don’t get me wrong. Benchmarks are important. Arguably, the world ex-US needs better references to aspire towards.

The problem aren't the benchmarks themselves, but the comparison they drive.

Why comparison is a game with no finish line

Researchers at Warwick and Cardiff studied thousands of UK households and found something uncomfortable.

What predicted life satisfaction wasn't how much people earned. It was where their income ranked against the people around them. And we feel the ones above us far more than the ones below.

Read that again slowly.

It means the moment you climb, your reference group climbs with you.

Make VP and you stop comparing yourself to Associates. You compare yourself to Directors. Hit your first big bonus and the neighbour's renovation suddenly registers. The goalposts are attached to your own progress. That is why the question never resolves, no matter how well you do.

This shows up in the data at the very top. Some of my peers earned between 300,000 to 500,000 in US Dollars, Singapore Dollars, British Pounds. Yet they still said they lived paycheck to paycheck and couldn’t afford to quit their jobs.

Luxuries became necessities for their income bracket.

Feeling wealthy, it turns out, doesn't arrive with a number. Which raises the real question:

The question my clients and I measure ourselves against

After years of coaching and reading the research, I’ve replaced the comparison question with one I see echoed by investors and founders I deeply admire:

Notice what this question does.

It has a denominator you chose. Not your business school cohort. Not your social media feed. Not a stranger’s assumptions about retirement at 67.

Here's what hit me whilst I ran to the gym at 10pm after a crazy day at work:

We can feel envious of the surfer in Bali with no responsibilities, and ten minutes later feel envious of the person in the expensive suit in the glass building. Those two lives are incompatible. Envying both proves the comparison was never about what we actually want.

To beat someone at their life, you’d have to want their whole life. Their sacrifices, their trade-offs, their sleepless nights. Almost nobody does, once they look closely.

Again, there’s more US research that backs this up in a practical way. Schwab identified that only 36% of Americans have a written financial plan. But among those who do, three in four say it makes them feel more in control of their money, and 96% feel confident about reaching their goals.

A plan doesn't guarantee anything. But it does swap an unanswerable question, “am I ahead of everyone else,” for an answerable one, “am I on track for what I said I wanted.”

This is at the heart of my work

One client came to me having saved more than most people I know. On paper, on any benchmark, she was ahead. She still felt behind, and she couldn't tell me what she was measuring against.

So we didn't start with her portfolio. We started with the life. Where she wanted to live. What business she'd like to build. The number that would let her stop trading time she couldn't get back.

Then we looked at her money against that.

Same savings. Better portfolio. Completely different picture.

Some of it was quietly pointed at a life she'd never actually chosen.

That is the shift. Not a bigger number. A truer denominator.

Through my 1:1 Wealth Clarity Accelerator, this is the work we do together.

You can start building your emergency fund and portfolio with generic tips tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with starting there.

But the day you measure that money against your own life instead of everyone else's, the work changes. You stop asking whether you're ahead. You start knowing where you're going.

If that question landed somewhere for you, let’s talk it through. Book a call:

Money Mojo provides financial education and coaching only, not regulated financial, tax, or legal advice.

As always, I'm rooting for you.

Sanam

P.S. I'll be sharing my work on LinkedIn with you here, so you hear from me more!