Hi Reader,
My daughter is the wealthiest member of our household.
It isn’t because she has a small amount saved away for a future college education, or business venture, or first home, or whatever she might deem to be the best use of funds as a young adult.
It isn’t because she devours books two or three at a time, soaks up knowledge in school and out, and asks so many questions that I run out of brainpower when attempting to answer them all.
It isn’t because she has best friends galore, or two actively involved parents who love her, grandparents who are ever-present, and a community of wonderful people who come out to support her philanthropic fundraisers.
Actually, it’s all of these things, and she is very fortunate to have all of these benefits and this support in her life. But none of this is the primary source of her wealth.
My daughter is the wealthiest member of our household because she’s 9 years old and has decades upon decades of time at her disposal. And time is our greatest commodity.
I say this knowing that time is precious, and like money, it can disappear, at best, gradually, at worst, all at once. I say this knowing that my daughter will live a long, healthy life, as I refuse to accept the alternative.
Day by day that surplus of time will diminish. It will be spent on frivolous things, like watching TV or dwelling on events not worth an additional second of her time. It will also be invested in experiences, in growth, in the people around her. She’ll be rewarded by many of those investments, even if some of them don’t provide the returns or pay the dividends she’d hoped. Maybe a few of these investments will provide the return of a longer life. But the best days will always be limited. Time will always be finite.
Graham Duncan is an investor and philanthropist who coined the term “Time Billionaire,” which I first heard explained in an interview with lifelong perfector Tim Ferriss. The concept is that if the average human lifespan is 78 years, then each person has at least 2 billion seconds to live. By age 31 you’ve spent your first billion seconds. By the time most of us reach retirement financial independence, we’ll have spent more than 2 billion of however many seconds we ever had.
I might still be a Time Billionaire. You might still be too. But someday we won’t be, and there is just no changing that eventuality.
So what do we do about it? How do we budget and balance the spend-down of our most precious resource?
Sleep is a requirement, but also an investment. A great deal of time has to go there in order to make the rest of our time more profitable. If we’re going to do it, we might as well do it right.
For most of us, work is an equal or greater expenditure. There are many rules, written and unwritten, about how much time we’re supposed to spend working. 100 years ago the work week was six days. The number of hours worked by the average factory employee ranged between 10-16 hours PER DAY.
The industrial revolution changed that, largely due to Henry Ford’s recognition of its potential to create more productivity, not just on the factory floors, but in our lives. When human beings were working 50-100 hours a week, they were incredibly inefficient, at work and at home. Injuries were commonplace. Family time was virtually nonexistent. Rest was only for the Sabbath.
Ford innovated the workdays and experimented with shortening hours and limiting the days. He landed on the 5-day, 40-hour work week we all know. He aligned his workforce around this thinking in 1926, and by 1940 the standard 40-hour work week was incorporated in the Fair Labor Standards Act. Quality of life improved through a combination of innovation and creativity.
We had a similar opportunity with the technological revolution but went the wrong way. The technology accessible at our fingertips 24/7 also made work accessible 24/7.
Somehow a combination of innovation and recession lead to fewer work hours 100 years ago, yet 15 years ago the same combo led to MORE work hours for salaried employees.
Now here we are with a similar opportunity to review. Corporate America is rethinking the workplace, incorporating remote work and hybrid workforces. There’s a push-pull playing out, with strong opinions on either side of the “should you be in the office” controversy. Maybe the issue isn’t where you physically spend your work hours, but instead how many hours you actually work.
Artificial intelligence represents a great combination of risks and opportunities, but its ability to increase efficiency is unassailable. It’s the ultimate “work smarter, not harder” hack.
What if corporate America were able to increase productivity (and profitability) with fewer work hours? What if instead of cutting jobs or pay, they kept those numbers the same? Henry Ford INCREASED jobs AND pay, which created greater productivity and quality of life, and greatly reduced turnover. Who wouldn’t want to make the same amount of money in less time? How could the competition possibly compete for that talent?
And what could we do with all that excess time? Spend it with our children? Volunteer in our community? Exercise more? Have time to cook more nutritious meals? Learn new things, challenge ourselves in different ways? The American education system is built around the concept of a broad education creating a well-rounded individual. Why should that stop when school stops?
And wouldn’t this all make us better at our jobs? Wouldn’t this all lead to greater productivity, and greater efficiency, when there’s more time in our lives for everything else?
This is why we offload responsibilities, to spend less of our time. This is why I hired someone to mow my lawn. I really like mowing my lawn, but I like spending my time with my daughter more.
For our younger clients, this is one of the best value adds we can provide. We build plans and watch over their finances so they don’t have to spend excess time in their busy lives worrying about it. That’s a logical, easily understandable concept to grasp.
But what about our older clients? What if I told you that service was even more valuable to them? If time is our most valuable resource, and our older clients have even less of it, how they spend that time becomes even more important. They have less time to waste, and certainly, less time to waste worrying about money.
Most of us, if we’re lucky, are born as time billionaires. How we spend our time impacts our ability to maintain our wealth and our health. Ever heard the phrase “worked to death?” Ever explored how much stress erodes your health? It’s also a costly expenditure of your time wealth.
We all have different spending habits, in finance and in life. Maybe we should focus more on how we spend our wealth of time to get the most out of the latter.
Stay Positive!
CoFi
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.
