Finances

What Should You Choose: Money or Time?

by theminimalistmom |
What should you chose: your money or your time?

I think I try to choose time over money in my life.

In fact, I think the value of time was one of my bigger takeaways when we started getting into minimalism, decluttering and paying off debt with ‘gazelle like intensity’ as the great Dave Ramsey would say. Suddenly, I could equate stuff with time. The cost of time to maintain, the money and the hours of work that money represented. What the space to store that stuff cost us in mortgage, utilities, insurance. As someone in mid-life with young kids time is on my mind often. The passing of time so quickly as years. Or the dragging of time so slowly as hours. The dearth of time for my singular use. Time is a constant.

This piece in the New York Times attempts to answer the question what is worth more: money or time. It starts with a question for a parent of a new baby. Should the parent take the extra weekend of work to increase their income? Or should they stay home to have more time with their 12 week old baby. What will make them happier? The extra money in the bank or the extra hours with their new baby.

Of course, for many people there is simply no question to answer. They need the money for basic living costs. But this article examines the question for people that do have a choice. And if you’re a minimalist wannabe like me, the answer will affirm your choice to value time over money.

when it is a choice, the likelihood of choosing more time over more money — despite the widespread tendency to do the opposite — is a good sign you’ll enjoy the happiness you seek.

Reading this article made me think of our current lifestyle and from a few angles it looks and feels like we’re seriously undervaluing time. My husband is away from us 2-3 weeks a month. That’s a lot of time to give up. And although it’s not forever, at most we think it will be ten months, it feels pretty long.

Why have we given up so much time (instead of money) so willingly?

We’re hoping to give up this time now to gain more in the future. We’ve always hoped that my husband could take a year, or even – dream scenario – be mostly retired, and while the kids were still in school. This venture my husband is working on now might make that possible down the road. Plainly speaking I make considerably less money than him so for this to happen we would have to hit a financial milepost like have our mortgage paid off to make it work. So we’re hoping that sacrificing time in the short term brings us more time later. Also, we know it’s just ten months and if it becomes truly unbearable we can always just move me and the kids over to where my husband is.

Is it the right choice? I can’t say. I think about if something were to happen, like one of us became critically ill, and would I wish we’d done things differently. Then I remember that I can’t predict the future. So right now, this ultra-long distance commute makes sense for us for a number of reasons (some that I don’t share here because they’re not mine to share).

Funny how my answer to this question has changed over the years. I clearly remember talking to a coworker at one of my first post-university jobs and asking him if the was applying for the new manager position. I assumed he would: he was smart and had been there for a few years. When he said no I was shocked. Why?

Taking time over money when you have a new baby.

He didn’t want the extra stress and responsibility and hours. He didn’t want to check email at night or have to stay late for meetings. He had a new baby at home and he said his priority was his family. And, he added, his current salary was enough for him. Totally baffling answer to me, at the time a 22 year old, debt riddled singleton but now? Sounds reasonable.

I find the question of choosing time or money endlessly fascinating. There isn’t a wrong answer here. Sometimes prioritizing income over time is the right answer in the short term for many reasons: early retirement, finite work available, paying for large unexpected expenses, trying to make a big purchase like a house without assuming a lot of debt, etc.

Are you someone that has the luxury of deciding to work more, or less, or make career choices based on giving yourself more time rather than more money? Do you actively choose to spend less on big and small things so that you don’t have to work more? Is money more important to you right now than time?

More on money and time:

How regular people take a year off work. 

  • Thank you for your perspectives. I totally agree on a lifestyle of living on less to enjoy life more. I’ve raised my kids in Cambodia and am now blogging about it. When you get a chance, check it out!

  • I totally go for time. As a single mum with a 7yo daughter I’ve made all my career choices around being at home for her and available during the holidays. We’ve had some tricky years with very little money but every time we’ve managed to come through by living smaller and spending less.

  • If money was more important than time then I would have to get a real job. Instead I am going to, more or less, leave consumerism behind for a couple of years and move to a village in Romania where I can garden, create, write and try to find my thoughts that somehow got lost in the bustle of work and traffic in the UK. Challenging? Most likely yes, but time and satisfaction of life ranks higher on my list of things to accomplish.

  • This is a great question to ponder. But for me, many times the question is three-pronged. It’s money, time or ENERGY. I often choose “Energy” over saving money at this point in my life. As an example, my dishwasher is broken, and while we wait for our landlord to fix it, I’m buying paper plates because washing dishes by hand for 9 people is more than I want to do! This also saves me time, but mostly it’s about saving my energy for other more important things.

    • Ooh this is interesting insight from a large family parent. I have found that my energy just isn’t great since our third child arrived and I am taking more shortcuts like buying some premade things like granola bars. In the past I really tried to make everything from scratch, and I loved it but right now, in this season of life it takes up a lot of my energy. Thank you for weighing in Carrie!

  • Oh yes this seems to be a daily conversation at our house! My my husband is constantly being asked to work 10-20 hours of overtime every week, and because he has moved into a managerial position, it is expected of him to work as many hours as anyone under him. The people under him are mostly younger and will take as many hours as they can get, we don’t “need” it and the bump in his paycheck is not worth the time in my opinion. But, then there have also been times when things have been slow at work, so we’re faced with the decision also to work as much as possible while there is work and then hope for things to slow down…I agree, no right answer…

  • It’s such an interesting topic to explore the debate between time and money. My husband and I are about to have our first child (just two weeks away!) and we have been working and paying off our debts frantically for the past three years. Now that they are at a manageable level, I can comfortably take 4 months off (UK maternity leave is just a few weeks) as we have enough savings. When we were paying off our debts for those three years, the focus was always on money so that when our baby arrives we have the time.
    Great post and very thought provoking.
    Lisa | lisavillaume.com

    • Congratulations on the impending arrival of your first baby. And more congratulations on paying off debt. I really enjoyed the NYT article but feel that life is rarely as cut and dried on money vs. time – even for those living comfortably. Many of my friends have moved to being contract employees or consultants as they headed into their late 30s. Most of them did it for work life balance and flexibility. But they often have to work short windows of incredibly long hours to make it work. The pay off is huge – more vacation time and overall more time for themselves – but they do take money over time regularly.

  • It seems to me that in a lot of situations one partner will have the luxury of choosing time, but it’s uncommon for both to be able to.

    I am mostly a stay at home mum, but I also work 3 days per fortnight as an optometrist. This is enough to cover our daily living costs, while my husband’s income looks after mortgage/bills/savings. He’s a doctor but he is still training, which means long hours without really amazing pay. I think if he had a less demanding job I would work more, but at the moment it would cause more stress so it’s not worth it!

    • Tyra, this is very true of my family and many families we know. One parent has an hours intensive job and the other cut hours (or ambitions or both) once kids arrived. We didn’t know we were making such a big decision five years ago but when my husband accepted a job overseas I effectively shelved having a corporate job. My previous work had some long hours and wasn’t compatible with kids and a spouse that often worked out of town. So I decided to do some writing for a few years and mostly stay-at-home. Almost six years later and here I am still doing that.

  • I read this article just before I saw this post. It’s interesting, I’ve been in the position of having a very high paying job, but I lived for the weekends and was miserable. I left that job took a 75% pay cut for a job I loved and which gave me so much more time. Eight years later, my position was eliminated and I was laid off. I found it just as stressful to have no money as it was to have no time. I think it is all about balance. Sometimes, you need to choose the money if it means putting food on the table. But if your only going after the money for the sake of having more money you are missing out on living your life. I agree with you, I think the answer changes depending on your circumstances and seasons of life.

  • This is an interesting concept. My husband and I would unequivocally choose time in a perfect world. We do have the luxury of choosing, but at the same time, we had a bad run of big-ticket things go wrong with our house combined with a very expensive hospital stay for our youngest son and I when he was born over the last 2 years, so we struggle between paying off that debt faster and my husband working more and seeing our kids less versus paying it off slower and spending more time together. We really try to strike a balance because like you mentioned, if something happened tomorrow, would we regret the debt or missing out on making memories more? We can’t control the future, true… but we can control whether we have regrets should something happen. Also affecting the decision-making process is the fact that my husband has basically unlimited overtime right now but after next year won’t have much for a good while. It’s a complicated balancing act that changes from week to week and day to day, but overall we are satisfied with the way life is going. We are working towards modifying our lives and paying that debt off so that eventually our income is perfectly plenty for us.

    • This is what I am referring to when I said basically sometimes things happen that require you to put money ahead of time. Thank you for sharing the reality of the time vs. money question. And my fingers are crossed for you on the debt pay off.

  • I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. We play the time v. money a lot when we decide on vacations. For example, we decided to fly to our parents’ city for the holidays despite it costing 4x what it would cost to drive. However, my husband only gets a couple days off, so we need to maximize time. We were able to offset plane tickets by asking our families to just put the money they would’ve spent on gifts for us (adults) towards the flights, and we’d put the money we’d spend on gifts to them on the tickets. This helped us stay within our holiday budget AND get to visit both of our families instead of them always coming to us.

    The biggest way I’ve been trying to figure out time v. money is with still being a semi-stay at home parent. Both of our boys are in elementary school, and my side work is not frequent enough to fill up that time. I’m constantly feeling like I need to get a full-time job, that I’m wasting my education and talents. However, I also know that the next decade will go very quickly, especially when I only get to see our boys for about 4 hours per week day and on weekends. That already doesn’t feel like enough. I can’t imagine trying to fit in family time in with having a full time job and my husband’s strenuous and long-hour full time job. I feel bad asking him, but my husband can make more in one full over-time shift than I could make at nearly any part-time job. So for now that’s what were doing, but it is a decision I constantly question.

  • I’m planning/negotiating a maternity leave for pretty much as long as I can get. I like my work and I care about my projects, so I’ll probably do some work from home, but I had a discussion with my boss about how I’m not worried one bit about going on “leave without pay” status. As long as my job is safe for when I want it, I don’t want to empty out my accrued leave balances or (shudder) borrow advanced leave. I’ll save those for when the baby gets sick in daycare or taking off on Christmas Eve.
    Of course, this is the USA, so we’re talking a crazy four-month maternity leave. I’d love a paid leave, but not enough to go into leave debt for it and not have flexibility later.
    I work because I like to work. We have chosen to live off my husband’s salary (I do pay childcare). So, we now have the flexibility for me to take as much maternity leave without pay as we would like.

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