Time is money – right? Ehh – I’m not sure.
Last week I painted a large section inside our house. While doing so, I had ample time to think – specifically about the tradeoff of paying someone to be doing the very task I was doing.
While I’m a huge believer in the Time Value of Money, I was thinking more about the Money Value of Time. (Image credit to Carl Richards.)
I listened to a podcast in which the guest said early on in his career he would either ignore or delegate anything that didn’t add $5,000 an hour to his personal income. I wholeheartedly agree there’s business-specific truth to this – hiring, empowering, and delegating certain tasks to others.
For me, let’s use easy math, and let’s say I want to target to earn $100/hour of my time. If it took me 25 hours to paint, then I could have easily justified paying a contractor $2,500 to do it.
But (pun warning) how wide of a brush do we paint with this idea? Time is a tricky thing (see my thoughts on Chronos vs Kairos about that).
What about life outside work? Am I going to pay someone to help with the dishes after dinner? To teach my boys to ride a bike? To attend my daughter’s gymnastics meets? To volunteer in ministry or around the community? This gets dicey.
Or what about other things we enjoy? I happen to enjoy [most] house projects. I could financially justify paying someone to paint, mow, or fix some appliances. But I personally place a value on being pseudo-handy, seeing instant results, and figuring things out. Shoveling snow, all plumbing and HVAC work – different story, and I’ll gladly pay someone to do those things.
But what if ALL my time was spent doing those projects – leaving no time to spend with my kids? Or I became so agitated doing those things I was miserable for days? Or what if my wife feels left alone while I’m doing these things? Then I think using Money to pay someone else to do something gives me more Time to spend elsewhere.
I don’t believe that Time is equal to Money. I believe Time is more valuable than Money simply because Time is non-renewable. The key is to figure out how to better utilize Money to best allocate our Time.
And to do that – you have to get super clear on
1- what your Values are, so that
2- you can allocate your Time accordingly, and
3- allow Money to give you that Time.
I’ll close with two last thoughts.
First: I think these things can change over time. There very well might come a time I no longer enjoy mowing (or painting or tinkering) and it then becomes better to pay someone to do it. And second – these Values are all relative – what’s of of Value to me might not be of Value to you, and that’s ok. That just means we each need to spend the time to figure out the usage ourselves.