There’s an internal battle we face on a daily basis, which is our time and it’s clash with money. If we compress 30 years of our working lives into 3 years of time for instance, and accumulate how much we earn during that span, we would all be millionaires within a few years.
The slogan “time is money” is well known. It was first used decades ago to remind workers that the time not spent working, is wasted time not making money.
This has been adopted and refined in today’s economy, that every industry revolves around the equation: Time = Money.
For the everyday working person, this resounds true. We exchange our time and effort for a paycheck, for income, for saving and survival.
However, once inspecting this formula deeper, it turns out to be only half true.
This based on the transitive property of equality, that if time equals money, and vice verse, money must then equal time. But money isn’t time, so the equation always doesn’t work both ways.
The Link Between Money And Time
There is a link but they’re not equal. Money is a two-way street. What most do is sell their time to earn money.
But once you decide to spend, lose, or gamble your money away, there are abundant supplies of money in the economy, where you can earn it back and make more of it.
But our time is a one-way street. We can sell our time for money, but we can’t buy that expended time back.
The time we have is finite and burnt away and can’t be replaced, we just grow older.
Time Is Invaluable Money Is Valuable
This inequality plays out in our lives once we dedicate our time to do unproductive work, become lazy, when in the pursuit of making money.
Once we do so, it’s the complete opposite of what we’re wanting to do, which is make more money in less time.
What we constantly say is if we could make enough money, then we could buy more “quality” time with our loved ones, do hobbies, to pursue our life long dreams.
We trade our time for money, such as working hard while we’re young, so we can buy back this lost time to do the things we’ve always wanted to do, once we’re older or retired.
But what often happens is our health and our energy begins to expire.
So, if the plan is to save enough money so you can buy back the time you’ve lost working, what you’re doing is buying into the myth and not the math.
Spending Money To Buy Time
In order for this math to work, we’d have to save enough money, so we can finance a future of affluence.
That the money could be spent pursuing the activities which brings us meaning and enjoyment into our life.
With purposeful planning of our money, this can be possible. But, what about those who, despite they working all those long hours, struggles to make ends meet, to make any financial progress.
Or those who don’t care that time is money. Their money doesn’t equal time for them, so they frivolously spend their savings today, such as buying an expensive car, or gambling it away.
Money As A Tool
Money is an extremely powerful tool. It’s an amplifier when it comes to our values and our priorities.
What money does is it acts as an accelerator towards our goals, financing the education so we could accomplish what we want.
What this provides is a comfortable and safe environment on how we can live and enjoy our lives, while creating endless diversions, clothe and eat better, motivate us to help others.
This the powerful influence that money has, so we want more of it.
Are you using the power of money in alignment to what’s important to you, or are you wasting it on things that aren’t, while putting off the things which really matter.
How much do you spend right now, and how much of it do you bank, save for later.
What is the right formula, the exact balance between money affluence and time affluence.
To Invest Your Money And Time Wisely
What you need is to always pay yourself first, when it comes to money, and do so as efficiently as possible to save time.
It’s an excellent habit to save money for a rainy day, a portion of your earnings every month, before it’s spent on other expenses.
What we can become intentional about is identifying our purpose, our dreams, and the projects which are most important to us, and schedule them first.
Life can potentially leave us with a surplus of money, but it’ll never leave us with is a surplus of time.
To Calculate Time And Money
Avoid being time poor but money rich. Make strides in your life to create conditions in your life and career, which moves you closer to what your dreams are.
If you don’t know what those dreams are, then find pockets of time to discover your interests.
What you need is to audit your time expenditures. Money is necessary, but time is essential.
Seek to outsource, automate, or eliminate those tasks which are nonessential or you don’t enjoy doing, and you’ll instantly win back some valuable time.
What’s established is that time is money, but money isn’t always time. It comes down to our intentions on how we apply our time and our money, on a daily basis.