All the time in the world doesn’t guarantee happiness, just as all the money in the world doesn’t always equal happiness. Here’s how to budget time to find your balance of hours and finances.
Browsing through Psychology Today recently, I came upon an essay by financial planner Anne Johnston discussing the relationship between time and money. The article noted Benjamin Franklin’s classic quote from 1748, “Time is money.” Johnson went on to say, though, that while time might equal money, money does not equal time.
“Money is valuable,” she wrote. “Time is invaluable … The idea is to trade time for money while young, so we can buy back time to do the things we’ve always wanted to do when we’re older. Here’s the rub: eventually health, energy or willpower runs out.”
Money is not a finite resource. You can always earn more, increase what you get paid, work more hours or even switch to a higher-paying career.
Time, the great equalizer, is finite. We all have 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week. Which leads to a twist on Franklin’s truism: Although our time is worth money, our money is not as valuable as our time. You can never buy more time.
We do still need some financial resources to really enjoy our time, do the things we dream about doing and live without fear of running out of money. Your best use of such resources, though, is to help enrich your time.
For example, in researching my book You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think, I learned that the happiest retirees enjoy many core pursuits, essentially hobbies on steroids. Most happy retirees from my research found their core pursuits while still working. They discovered a balance of time and money that helped them reach their goal of retiring happy.
These pursuits were in turn instrumental in motivating these retirees to be able to stop working, but not before reaching their financial goals. In the end, they had the money to retire and pursue their passions.
As you probably use a budget to plan how you use money, it makes perfect sense to put your time in a budget to be sure you don’t over-spend. Harvard Business Review recently published an article examining how people have a problem over-committing their time. The piece provides a helpful equation to see if you over-budget time.
Using the Review’s formula, add up the hours in a day that you spend on the necessities of sleeping, eating and other necessary daily tasks. Once you quantify your fixed time for self-care, subtract it from 24 hours to come up with your daily time budget.
Then total the time costs related to your external and internal expectations. If this figure is less than the time left in 24 hours minus your self-care hours, your time budget will work.
Easier said than done, sometimes. Like most people, I must often remind myself that it’s easy to over-commit in the name of growing my business and the pursuit of financial stability for my family.
When I do remind myself, I can realign my priorities for that particular day, whether spending some extra time with my family or catching up with an old friend. Some budgets are more important than others.
Follow AdviceIQ on Twitter at @adviceiq.
Wes Moss, CFP, is the chief investment strategist for Capital Investment Advisors and a partner at Wela, both in Atlanta. He hosts “Money Matters,” a live financial advice show on Atlanta’s News 95-5 and AM 750 WSB Radio. In 2014 Barron’s Magazine named him as one of America’s top 1,200 Financial Advisors. His newly released book, You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think published by McGraw Hill, is available on Amazon, iTunes and at your local bookstore.
Wes writes weekly about personal finance in the “Bargain Hunter Section” for AJC.com, the site of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Wes is also the editor and writer for About.com’s Personal Finance blog. Connect with Wes on Twitter at @WesMoss365 and on Facebook at Wes Moss Money Matters. You can also visit his website, WesMoss.com to learn more about Wes, and take his complimentary Money and Happiness Quiz.
AdviceIQ delivers quality personal finance articles by both financial advisors and AdviceIQ editors. It ranks advisors in your area by specialty, including small businesses, doctors and clients of modest means, for example. Those with the biggest number of clients in a given specialty rank the highest. AdviceIQ also vets ranked advisors so only those with pristine regulatory histories can participate. AdviceIQ was launched Jan. 9, 2012, by veteran Wall Street executives, editors and technologists. Right now, investors may see many advisor rankings, although in some areas only a few are ranked. Check back often as thousands of advisors are undergoing AdviceIQ screening. New advisors appear in rankings daily.