Your TIME is your most valuable ASSET

Rohit and Sapna have been happily married for the last 10 years. They have an adorable 5 year old daughter who has just started going to school. Both of them work for top notch multinational companies. Money is not a real problem for them. They earn well, and spend well. 

Weekdays are typically packed from early morning conference calls till late night customer meetings. They hardly get time to talk to each other except for the customary, mundane and routine activities from getting their kid ready for school, getting themselves ready for office, checking emails before they launch for a long drive for office. After going through the office churn and by the time they are back home, they are too tired and exhausted to think of anything other than planning for the next day.

However, they look forward to the "weekend" time. Weekends are typically a new movie in a theater followed by a dinner at a good restaurant and a great drive back home. Other than that, usually, the modern technology forces them to stay connected to office through SMS, phone calls or emails over phone. 

Because of the high profile jobs and the money that both Rohit and Sapna earn, they have been able to procure an elegant apartment (of course on a 20 year home loan). They also have a good latest model SUV and other latest electronic gadgets. Do not ask me about the loan part. It is very obvious. Loan, now a days, seems to be our birth right. They also realize that they got to continue to work for the next 20 years to make sure that they pay off all their loans. Not that they seem to have any issue with working and continuing to earn better salaries as they grow up in their career paths.

Everything is going fine and life seems to be picture perfect, or so it seems from the outside.Something is not 100% right. They are not truly happy.

Does this story sound familiar to you? Are you a part of a similar story line? While money and luxury have not been a problem in Rohit and Sapna's lives, they had one big assumption throughout their "successful" career journey, which seems to be going fundamentally wrong. They always had a feeling that having enough money will solve most of their problems. Well, hold your thought. I am not against money at all. I love money to a large extent. Money is surely important. There are no two considerations about that. But is money the MOST important ingredient of life? Is there anything that is even more important than money? Is there anything that is available to you only in defined and limited quantity and you cannot do without that? There is ... and that's TIME.

"TIME is money" is an age old saying. We read it, appreciate it and ignore it. Simple. 

Rohit and Sapna got everything correct in their lives except for understanding the fact that TIME always stays over MONEY in terms of its asset value. 

Let me try and explain you how.

While you can work hard and earn more money, you cannot do the same with time. You can never earn more time in your life. Time is limited. Worse, unlike money, you cannot control time's expenditure. Time of your life is getting spent at the rate of 24 hours per day and you cannot get more than that, you cannot take it on loan and you cannot produce it. And if you look at it closely enough, Time happens to be the biggest ingredient that enables your capacity to earn even money. 

Because of all these constraints on time, TIME scores as your most important asset in life, much more important than money is.

Let me ask you a very simple question to emphasize how this theory on time translates to practical life. When do you see your child more happy? When you give him more gifts OR when you gift him with more of your time? In most cases, i have seen the response as latter. That was true for Rohit and Sapna and that's true for me and my family as well. Your child needs more time. He can play with an ordinary or even a broken toy as long as you are physically and mentally involved with him or her with all your time. But you give him the best and the costliest of the toy and you would see that he would get bored in a few days, if not earlier. 

Your child wants your TIME. Your spouse needs your time, your parents need your time, YOU need your own time for yourself.

I want to reiterate that i am no way saying that money is not important. But what i am only suggesting is that "do not try to trade off ALL your available time for money". It is not a wise deal by any means. Save some of it to have the right balance in your life. 

There are only 2 ways to balance time and money in life. 

1. Do not trade off all your time with money

You have got to create a balance in your life. Do not keep running in a rat race not knowing where you are headed. After you have enough money for a decent living, you got to hold on to trade more of your time with money. Progression, beyond a certain point, in your job may not always be for good, especially if it consumes more of your time and introduces more stress in your life. Stay happy in the position you are in - keep earning enough but have enough time in your life to give it to your family and loved ones.

2. Accumulate enough money so that you don't have to spend any more time to earn money.

You can trade back your time if you accumulate enough nest egg which is self sustaining in nature. We call this state as "Financial Freedom" and this freedom allows you to spend your TIME the way you want it. The money part is taken care off by the nest egg, which ensures flow of enough money to meet your regular money needs.Yes, it takes some time and patience to reach this state, but that is one way to come out of the rat race and spare enough TIME for our family.

Whatever path you take, make sure you understand and acknowledge the fact that time is limited and you cannot produce more of it. Spend it wisely. Even if you have not spent enough time with your family till now, you can start doing it now. 

Mother Teresa once said:

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”  

Cheers

Manoj Arora