"When he’s at the 19th hole, though, he finds himself faced by his fellow golfers who choose to live a life of conspicuous consumption, boasting about the flashy cars they have bought on credit, their hi-tech clubs and the sexy, high-risk stock they are sure to make a killing out of. It might be tempting for this man to feel out of place among these men, but he shouldn’t.

"What he should do is have the character to keep quiet and continue doing what is best for him, because this is the man who is in the stronger position. He has worked out what he wants from his life and he has a strategy in place to achieve it. His life might look boring to his flashier friends, but he has built his life on a solid foundation — he knows how much money makes him happy and allows him to lead the life he wants to.”

Abey is a student of life. He is fascinated by human psychology and the way in which it informs and impacts on our lives in all areas.

“Over the past 15 years there has been an explosion of research into happiness and valuable links have been made between happiness and economics. This is a serious area of research. After all, in 2002 the Nobel Prize for Economics went to Princeton University psychologist Dr Daniel Kahneman for his work in applying psychological insights to economic theory,” says Abey.

The book is a collection of wisdom gathered from years of research.

For Abey the launch of his book ‘How Much is Enough?’, is the beginning of a process and not an end in itself. “The book is a collection of wisdom gathered from years of research, talking to people and my experiences as a financial consultant, but it’s not meant to be a prescriptive quick fix book that offers all the solutions”.

Rather Abey sees it as the beginning of a conversation and an invitation to people to start thinking about what they want and how much money they need in order to live the lives that they dream about. Abey is firmly committed to guiding people towards living their authentic life. He refers to research done by Professor Tim Kasser who has identified four sets of needs which must be satisfied if human beings are to function well. They are safety, security and sustenance, competence, efficacy and self-esteem, connectedness and autonomy as well as authenticity.

For Abey living an authentic life, one in which one has aligned one’s needs and is living mindfully, means being engaged in our lives rather than merely going through the motions and letting life happen to us.

“We should strive for freedom and opportunities to experience life in our own way,” he says in his book.

While financial security and independence are important to most people, Abey says, “The real challenge is finding a healthy balance between this and other important values such as authenticity, competence and belonging.” A sound lifestyle financial planner should be helping you to achieve this balance.

Abey doesn’t want to tell people what to do in order to make the most money they can, rather he wants them to turn to trusted planners and coaches who can help them to find out the path they need to follow in order to reach their own goals.

For some that might be the Porsche, for others it might be having a country getaway in order to spend quality time with their families. But whatever it is, it must be the right path for the individual. We’re all different and there are no quick and easy exercises that will sort out your financial life and lead to a fulfilling life.

“What you won’t find me doing, or any trustworthy lifestyle financial planner doing, is applying the same formula for success to everyone’s life. Make sure that the person you choose to advise you really gets to know you.”

Abey, who after all runs a successful business that helps clients to make the most of their investments, just wants you to know how much you need to make you happy and how to manage the process of getting there.

Know yourself and what you want from your life.

His lessons are know yourself and what you want from your life, know how to leverage the financial security you need for that life. Learn how to modify your behaviour so that you are thinking with your higher brain and not merely reacting to fads and dicey advice from commission driven financial consultants. Get coaching so that you know the road you need to follow. And the kicker? Give something back.

Abey tells of an experiment conducted among university students that had surprising results.

A group of students were given two assignments. Firstly they were given $50 and told to go out and buy anything they wanted and rate how happy the purchase made them immediately. Then they had to rate the satisfaction they felt after a week and then after a month.

The second part of the assignment was to write a letter of gratitude to someone and read it out to them and rate it in the same way.

The students all thought that buying something would make them happiest and were unconvinced at the outset of the experiment that telling someone they were grateful would impact on their happiness. What they found was the opposite.

After a month they found that writing a letter to someone expressing gratitude had given them a far greater sense of happiness and fulfilment than being allowed to buy whatever they wanted. It’s a lesson in the value of giving back.

“Look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They are immensely rich men who know that giving back is part of the process of creating happiness.” It’s a lesson for us all to learn. Giving back has a positive spin on creating happiness and, as Abey says, finding out what makes you happy is the first step in sorting out your financial planning.

Abey says that through writing the book and engaging in interviews and conversations about what he has learned and pulled together in ‘How Much is Enough?’, he has continued to learn and discover more about the subject.

With a sense of glee he says he learned a valuable lesson that distilled this message for him after a journalist wrote a 26 page article on his thesis on the happiness/wealth principle. “The story had a headline I wish I had thought of ‘Happiness Buys You Money’.” And a good lifestyle financial planner will help you to internalise this lesson and maximise your life.

• Abey is a co-founder and international strategic adviser to acsis, an independent financial services group.

• ‘How Much is Enough?’ is published by A&B Publishing and co-authored by Andrew Ford. For more information go to www.howmuchisenough.net