Comments on: Time is NOT money–at least, not yours

By: Jasmine

Jasmine — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:20:19 +0000

Easier than EBAY– try selling DVD’s or CD’s thru the company “SecondSpin.com”.
They re-sell, so don’t pay as much as a direct buyer might, BUT there’s no listng fee, no fee off the final sale, and no delay being paid.
All you have to do is enter the UPC code to see what they’ll pay and they cover your shipping cost (media mail rate).

By: Ramit Sethi

Ramit Sethi — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:01:13 +0000

Thanks, fixed!

By: Nick Atnite

Nick Atnite — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:56:18 +0000

FYI – Your Cup o’ Noodles link is broken.

By: Mike McDougal

Mike McDougal — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:24:06 +0000

For me, time and money are very closely related. I make about $55/hour. (Bonuses and things like that complicate it a bit, but that’s close.) I can work from home. There’s almost always work available. For me, it makes sense to pay people to do a lot of things. For instance, it makes no sense for me to do laundry. My condo doesn’t have a washer and dryer, so doing laundry wastes about an hour of my time. I can get the concierge to pick it up and have it done for $10 to $20 per week. I can’t do laundry in 15 minutes.

By: Hasina

Hasina — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:35:41 +0000

I agree with the opportunity cost argument. Time is money in the sense that what could you be doing with that 2 – day air mail if you got it two days earlier?

Would it mean a loss of money if you waited two weeks for it? Like, if it was a check or something? It depends also on the example you use. I think you incorrectly said that senior executives time is worth more than money. It’s just that their time is way higher in value, therefore, having someone who would do the dishes, laundry makes sense, because they could pay that person with five minutes of working time ( ie Oprah who makes 200,00 dollars a minute or some crazy figure like that).

If I could make 200,000 in a minute, there is NO way I would dishes, that’s a “waste” of my time. That is where the opportunity cost lies. It’s not a question of whether time is money, it’s not. Time is time. Money is money. The way you use your time reflects how much money you make/lose/earn/ etc.. That’s why time has a different value. What is an hour to someone who only has days to live? What is a minute to someone who is in the path of a tornado? In that case, time can be priceless. In economic terms, since everything has a “price” that is where the compounded interest, savings etc. makes a difference.

But culturally, if you ask a Masai from Kenya, how much is your time worth? He wouldn’t say “well, I make a minimum wage of 5.75″. He would say that time is ongoing and that he will enjoy it while he has this time on Earth. Similarly if you ask the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, how much is your time worth, they wouldn’t talk about their day jobs or dreams of opening their own business. They would talk about fighting for the cause and continuing until they reach their goal.

I think that people use this popular adage that “time is money” because they are just trying to encourage people not to be lazy to get a job and work, and more importantly to not “waste” time and vice versa, to not waste money (because it reflects the time it took for you to get it).

Therefore, if we go by the colloquial usage, it’s just saying hey folks, don’t waste my time/your time, or waste my money/your money. We often lose the value of time because we feel like we have so much of it, simple sayings like this tie the mental concept to a very physical reminder of value – money.

By: AM

AM — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:12:33 +0000

TIme = Money, still.

I somewhat agree with you, however, time is not only valued in monetary terms, but in terms of opportunity costs.

So, instead of doing this or that yourself, paying 10 bucks and getting it done, might be just worth it.

Furthermore, having one hour more to do what you like cannot be valued in terms of what you usually make per hour on the basis of total weekly hours, because even if you should merely earn $5 per hour this way, you might be able to do extra work during this hour, getting paid overtime or delivering newspapers or whatever – and here you could get paid much more, no matter what you make weekly; this of course depends on your creativity and skills (assume you would teach students, help them with homework for $10 each).

By: Q

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:32:28 +0000

You forgot considering that not every hour has the same “value”:

- I can not spread my tasks over the entire week as I wish (e.g. no one will go play basketball with me at 10pm on Saturday)
- I just don’t want to cook for hours after I skipped lunch to finish a project in time
- After giving a 4 hour presentation followed by a workshop I will not be in the mood to chat with friends

Great Blog by the way.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 04:32:15 +0000

My boss and good friend told me that every thing is time OR money. If you don’t have the time to do something, you have to spend the money, or if you don’t have the money, you have to spend time.

By: Vincent Orlando

Vincent Orlando — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:21:46 +0000

Dividing your income by 168 hours doesn’t make any sense to determine your time value either, since whether you’re rich or poor you biologically need to sleep 6 – 9 hours every night. Why not round down to 100 (it’s easy division) and use that as the baseline? At $800/week (after taxes) that makes your time a more realistic $8 / hour rather than 4.75.

By: James

James — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 03:36:40 +0000

If I’m at home playing video games, and someone says, “Come mow my lawn”, I’ll say, “No thanks, time is money, I’d rather play video games than mow your lawn”. But if they offer me money making it worth my time, then I’ll do it.

So yeah, wouldn’t that imply that time is money?