Karen Hughes, counselor to President Bush, decided that she had had enough of the long hours away from her family and friends.

Hughes announced in April that she was leaving Bush’s side at the White House to go home to Texas and spend more time with her husband and 15-year-old son.

Immediately the decision by Hughes to focus on her family generated debate about whether people can have high-powered careers and a successful home life.

I think what Hughes did was wonderful. Her decision caused me to reflect on my own tendency to work like a dog, sometimes at the expense of my family.

“In our American culture money has moved to the center stage,” Pamela York Klainer writes in her new book “How Much Is Enough? Harness the Power of Your Money Story And Change Your Life.”

Money, Klainer points out, “has gone well beyond its literal function as a way to provide for our essential needs and has become, in itself, an essential need. We’re working harder and earning more yet we continue to be driven, restless, unsatisfied.”

Klainer warns that for too many men and women, vigorously pursuing money and success, work has become the center of their life around which most other things friendship, volunteer service, spirituality and family needs revolve.

When it comes to money, we all need to stop and ask ourselves, how much is enough?

To do that you have to do some financial planning. In his new book, “Discover the Wealth Within You: A Financial Plan for Creating a Rich and Fulfilling Life, ” Ric Edelman doesn’t start off by telling people how to get rich. Instead, he urges all of us to set goals. Draw up a financial plan that focuses on the things you really want to do in life.

And those goals shouldn’t just consist of paying for a child’s college education or preparing for retirement. Those aren’t goals, Edelman says. They are obligations.

“There is more to life than obligation and responsibility,” Edelman writes. “There is also personal fulfillment and happiness.”

I know some of you are thinking this is psychobabble nonsense. The bills have to be paid and you’ve got to earn lots of money to make do.

However, Edelman and Klainer aren’t saying you shouldn’t try to provide well for yourself and your family. But at some point, you have to ask: Is that extra shift, second job or promotion with its long hours or extensive travel keeping you away from what is most important to you?

“We have to learn to balance our anxiety about saving for the future and a rainy day with the knowledge that we are not promised anything,” Klainer said. “Nobody is promised tomorrow.”

Answer the question of how much is enough by focusing on the financial, spiritual and psychological parts of your life, Klainer advises.

First, figure out what amount of assets you really need to maintain the lifestyle that is really important to you.

Secondly, figure out what you most long to have. If you long to be a good parent to your children, then you have to arrange your life so that they are truly at the center of it.

“While you’re working on money and success, you need to put at least that much effort into developing relationships with people who make you feel better just by being around,” Klainer writes. “That’s the one thing that can last all the way to the end. If you don’t have such relationships, you’ll probably never feel as if you have enough no matter your level of financial success.”

Finally, stop using money and a career as a marker of success. Stop basing your success on that big-time job, big house, expensive car or brand-name clothes. You have to look for validation from within. Otherwise, you will never have enough.