Time is Money. This is a well-known concept that many of us have heard throughout our lives. But what does it mean?
For me, it draws up the image of someone tapping their foot, looking at their watch, and sighing impatiently. It implies the need to hurry up. Or maybe someone gives it to you as an excuse as to why they don’t have time to spend with you, thus enforcing that they can’t slow down. Time is MONEY, after all.
But wait. Slow down. I promise, you’ve got time for this. What if we’ve been misinterpreting this age-old proverb all along? What if instead of thinking that time is MONEY, we start to realize that TIME is money. This changes everything.
Why would you spend 8+ hours a day chasing something as insignificant as money, when you could easily exchange it for something far more scarce? The time that you have available is finite. Money is not.
Does that mean we shouldn’t care about money at all? No, of course not. Money is a tool that should help support the quality of your hours. What we need to do is find the balance.
The best way to do so is to stop converting your time into money and start converting your costs into time. Henry David Thoreau said “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” Is what you want to purchase still worth it when you’re paying with time instead of money?
If you think so, then carry on. I’m not here to tell you what to buy. Those are choices you’ll have to make yourself. But the less you spend on something unimportant to you, the more you’ll have to spend on what matters most.
My strategy for increasing the value of my time is not to work more hours, but to spend less on essentials. How do I do this? In part, by living abroad. My small monthly stipend of 700 Euros a month for teaching English 12 hours a week (and about 4 weeks of paid holiday) is more than enough for me to pay for my essentials, because here in Spain the cost of living is much lower.
When I lived in Michigan, I paid $425 a month for a studio apartment. Here in the north of Spain, the two-bedroom that I share with my partner is $450 a month. On the surface, that may look higher, but when you divide it by two, I’m only paying $225 a month for much more space, and it’s furnished! I could never find even an empty two-bedroom for this price back home.
Here, with just 15 hours of work per month, I have my rent paid. In comparison, my rent in Michigan took about 40 hours of my time per month. That’s a difference of 25 hours a month for just one budget item. Imagine how many hours you can save when you include the entire budget!
What would you do with 25 extra hours a month?
Hey Melissa, I used to focus a lot on eliminating non-essentials. Now I focus more on making each our of my work time worth more. I think they’re both good things to keep in mind, depending on the point in your life. Thanks for writing!
Fantastic advice, Daniel. I learned this myself this year by raising my private tutoring price. By increasing the monetary value I set on my time, I no longer felt like I was wasting so much of it. Thanks for the comment!