Poor people spend their time to save money. Rich people spend their money to save time.
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Time is more valuable than money.
You can get more money.
You can not get more time.
If you have ever read the The Millionaire Next Door you may recall that the wealthy in our society often do small things differently; many of these things seem subtle although they can lead to a substantial difference in ones net worth. One of those small changes is the understanding that time is finite, money is not; and it is wise to pay for things that save us time.
A real world, practical example of this perspective is the business owner who pays to have his/her lawn mowed. My wife and I do this – pay to have our lawn mowed. I don’t enjoy mowing, nor does my wife. We manage an amazing team of people in our web design firm in Grand Rapids, MI and time is always a commodity that we wish we had more of. Between work, church, school and time with our family there never seems to be quite enough time for everything.
I could mow our lawn each week in about two hours. So the question I asked myself was “if I had two additional hours a week what would I do with that time”? My answer boiled down to the simple realization that if I could work four additional billable hours over the course of the summer I could more than pay for the cost of having our lawn mowed. Given that, here in Michigan, my lawn probably needs to be mowed about 30 times a year I can save nearly 60 hours of my time by paying someone to mow my lawn. If I can pay for this by working just four of those sixty hours this means that paying to have my lawn mowed should save me well over 50 hours this year . . . or about an hour a week.
