The paradox (or love/hate relationship) between time & money

For most people, it takes time to make money and, traditionally, it took more time to make more money (think overtime for example). The paradox is that we don’t have time to actually enjoy the money we’re making and are instead just running on the human hamster wheel. So let’s talk about the paradox of time and money, how too much of one affect the other and check if you might need to change your current mix.

When money is abundant, time is usually scarce

In a conventional western lifestyle, people think money is the most important resource to have and they believe they need more of it so they trade a lot of their time to get more. As a consequence, they find themselves lacking time to do what they love so they use money to buy themselves more time which in turn makes them need more money.

Since they want to maximize their time to do what they love they will generally outsource whatever they have left like for instance:

• paying to get groceries delivered to the door
  (vs going to the farmer’s market or grocery store)
• taking uber to save time on the commute
  (vs using public transportation or walking)
• hiring a nanny to take care of the children during the week
  (vs spending more time raising the children)
• …

People in this situation tend to express the following behaviors:

• Can’t wait for the weekend or to take their next time off to come
• Spend copious amount of money on services that can help offload time from their already busy life (like grocery delivery while at home or all inclusive resorts/packaged vacation while traveling)
• Had to decide how/who to catch up with during their personal time
• Are always connect with their work from one way or another (work laptop at home/travel, smartphone with work notification…)

Pros: lot of money / Cons: not a lot of time to really get value of it (like buying an expensive piece of real estate but only spend ⅓ of the time in it, buying an expensive car and mostly using it to commute)

In a mindset when more money is better then time becomes more and more limited as we can sum it up in the following cycle:

When time is abundant, money can be scarce

If people think that time is the most important resource, they don’t need to get things done in a rush. They have access to more options that require way less money. In a place when they have time in abundance, they become extremely (time) flexible and can do things like:

• doing activity off-peak (grocery shopping on Monday) or off-season (skiing during the week)
• reconnecting with their body by spending time to pick, cook and truly enjoy what feed your body
• reconnecting with their environment by taking long strolls/walks in the park/forest/natural space
• reconnecting with their family by spending more time with their kids, parents and other relatives
• …

In a mindset when more time is better then money becomes less and less important as we can sum it up in the following cycle:

People in this situation tend to express the following behaviors:

• Can’t wait for Monday (as it is their new Friday)
• Don’t need an alarm to wake up in the morning
• Are excited to meditate and/or read and/or walk without feeling rushed
• Rediscover their surroundings by noticing things around you that you never had a chance to acknowledge before
• Enjoy long walks
• Express gratitude when things are not on a schedule (like a friend or a bus being late)

What about you?

Take a minute to draw a line on a piece of paper, put “Time is scarce” on the left end side and “Time is abundant” on the right end side. Like the example below:

Then mark how much time you have today with a cross (X) and how much time you would like to have ideally with a circle (O). If both marks doesn’t overlap, then think about what you can do to get to the square.

Here are some ideas to think about if you want more time for yourself:

• Can you work from home so that you spend less time on commute?
  • Pro: drastically reduce you work commute time
  • Con: less interaction with co-workers
• Can you reduce your time at the office? Our friend Jessica over at TheFionners.com took a part time job so she could get closer to the life she wanted for herself.
  • Pro: you have great control over your time
  • Con: you earn less money
• Can you become location independent so that you get more flexibility about where you want to be and how much you want to spend? Our destinations reports are great living proof that you can spend less while traveling than staying home.
  • Pros: you have greater control on both your spending (based on where you work from) and you time (no more commute)
  • Con: none to limited in real life contact with co-workers
• Can you take a “mini-retirements” so you get a taste of your own retirement before you are in your late 60s? Some of the greatest minds of our time have had their best creating moments while taking extended period of time off (like the designer Stefan Sagmeister who closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook – for more check out Stefan’s TED talk about the power of time off).
  • Pro: give you a taste of what your retirement might looks like
  • Con: can technically push your retirement year further as you won’t be accumulating money during a long break.

An alternative to working until 65 is taking year long mini retirements. This can bring near-term relief from the daily grind, refresh perspective on life & let creative exploration flourish and inspire you as it did to @sagmeisterwalsh https://t.co/gdpyFoLiyF #fire #retirement

— Nomad Numbers (@NomadNumbers) April 18, 2019

Our bottom line

Time and money are inversely proportional . The more you have of one, the less you have of the other. If you have too much money you might not have time to spend it. If you have too much time, you might not have enough money to enjoy it. We should also keep in mind that money doesn’t buy happiness so having much of is not really necessary.

On the other hand we should not forget that our retirement is not a function of how much we make but how much we save. So we should carefully keep in mind that it is up to us to decide how long we want to work.

During my working years, I always balanced work with time off by taking in average 7-10 days off every 3 months. While this might be a lot for someone working in the US (4-6 wks / year), this is actually on the lower end of the spectrum from someone like me that grew up in France (with a 5-8 wks vacation / year). That being said, I don’t regret my 15 working years at all as they taught me a lot and let me meet some amazing people. So by the time I finally had enough to have the option to make my regular work optional, I did not have much regret.

What is your relationship between time/money? Do you think it is property balance for you? If not, what action would you take to adjust this relationship? Take a few minutes to share your story with us by leaving a comment in the comment section below.