On… Trading Time for Money

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It is said that time is money. I guess they are different sides to a coin. When you’re young, you have time, but no money (excluding the top 10% of people born to rich parents); when you’re old you have money but no time. The best of course is to have a happy middle.   


Technically if you work hard, you can earn lots of money and the sky is the limit. But no matter how much effort you put in, you can only have 24 hours in a day. There is no way that you can extend it to 25 hours. That much is obvious. If time is finite and scarce, why then do people live as if they have all the time in the world? I think its because people are generally over confident in nature. They over-estimate the time that they really have. People think they can live forever until they realize they can’t.


Of course we have to work hard and earn money - How else are we going to buy the things we need to live? We should of course build up a nest egg for retirement as well. Otherwise, you may end up broke during retirement. Live a balanced life but if you must choose to sacrifice time vs money - always choose to sacrifice money. In my opinion, it is better to regret not having owned the flashiest car in the neighbourhood; than to regret having not spent enough time with your family. As Warren Buffet once said “I can buy anything in the world, but the only thing I can’t buy is time”.      


No doubt you have to trade time for money to survive in this world. However, don’t over trade (and spend the better part of your life chasing money) because when you finally realize you’re almost out of time, there is no amount of money that you can trade to buy back time.

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