I’m sure we’d all scream: BOTH! BOTH! like kids in a candy store, but if you had to choose one over the other what would it be?
When I was in debt, I wanted more money. I didn’t care about hours, burn out, being frustrated, stressed, tired and annoyed all the time.
I was in debt and I wanted out.
Now that I’m out of debt, I want more time.
Time is one of those tricky resources. It’s so finite.
You can always make more money but you cannot get back the time you’ve spent working or wasting your life away.
I know it’s silly to hear me say “you can always make more money” when I personally know of 5 cases where that is not true, and they’re struggling to make ends meet, but I wonder about the situation:
- Can they really not even pick up a part-time job on the weekends or at nights?
- Are they being too picky about what’s being offered out there? (No, seriously)
- Did they just live the high life for 20 years only to see it crash down around them, with no emergency savings?
These are all factors that are not far off in my 5 case scenario above. Every family/couple/person I talked to, said: I only wish I had saved more money aside for emergencies.
So those people? Yeah, they want more money.
Me, I’m happy to be able to have the choice of choosing between both, and willingly going with time.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
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If I could, it’d be both! But, if I had to pick, it’d be time. I’d want time with my family. But, this assumes that I have my debt paid off and can manage but I’m not fabulously wealthy. I think making a lot of money leads to spending a lot of money so more money is good if you’re really smart and careful, it’s ok, but otherwise, you can just end up being debt-ridden but you have a large salary. There’s no insurance for a perfect balance of the two. There’s always something off so you just keep working at one or the other!
I’d rather have time. No doubt about it. I know it’s my choice because on average I give more of money than my time. Which is why I’m reading your blog (lol). Think about it, would you rather spend 8 hours shoveling dirt for charity or give $200 towards the hiring of someone else doing the work? Time is money after all and the older one gets the more people request more of it.
I don’t think that it’s as simple as choosing time if and when you don’t desperately NEED money anymore. I don’t have any consumer debt beyond a mortgage and make way more than I need to live comfortably, but at this stage of my life – young and single with no dependents – I’d still choose more money over more time. I have plenty of time. I wake up and my days pretty much solely revolve around me: my work, my side business, my workout regime, my social calendar, my TV preferences, my dogs’ necessary bowel movements.
I have plenty of time by any measure, for whatever I want to do – none of which is particularly important. But later on, particularly if I create a family, I will inevitably want more time to spend with them. So for now I’d rather stockpile cash as much and as quickly as possible.
I agree money is more important when you’re younger, time is more important later. My entire life is designed around making money now, sort of, so I can have more time in my 30s to spend with my future children. But that’s all a gamble, I have a lot riding on the success of my company.
I think I would pick more time. If there was more time, then there would be more time to work…and more time to make more money. LOL
Right now at this stage in life I would choose money. Once I have a college degree and can make more then it will definitely be time. I don’t have a college degree which is why I’m in college, and I have to work more hours for the basics. People that have a specialized profession can work less hours for more pay. Usually, unless they work in medicine and health care.
I think time is more important than money — and that’s what I have more of by choice. I only work 35hrs per week at my full-time job so I definitely could pick up a part-time gig anywhere but I’m not interested in sacrificing my free time even if it would be awesome for my bank account.
This is hard for me to answer, haha. As a PhD student I have neither of those things 😛
I guess it depends on what I’m doing. If I’m working menial jobs, I’d rather only work as much as I need to get by. If I’m in debt or struggling to save, I’ll work more to take care of that but once it’s clear I’ll try to cut back on hours.
But when I’m doing something I love, like my research, I tend to get heavily involved regardless of whether I’m getting paid or not. I’m a little bit of a workaholic by nature. In that case it isn’t so much a time/money thing as it is just doing my work as best as I can. Although of course I’m hoping it will pay off in the future with a better job 😉
I’ think if I had to choose, I’d want more energy to use the time I have, better. I always say I need more time but I know if I budgeted out my time, like I do my money, I’d find a lot of areas to trim.
It depends. If I get more money but have the same lifestyle (i.e. I don’t spend more time at work), I would like more money because like Dave, I would then be able to do things like get a cleaner so I don’t have to do the chores I dislike, and I would be able to do more things that I would like to do that I can’t currently afford. If it means that I have to take on more hours at work though in order to get more money, then I wouldn’t go for that. With the commute factored into the work week, I’m doing work related things for between 48 and 50 hours a week (this is me extrapolating on the commute once I move. I’m expecting it to take between 45 minutes to an hour each way, because I’m TTCing). We could even have a second vehicle, and I could then drive and be at work in 15 minutes, if we had more money (saving me about an hour and a half a day of transit, even!).
That said, if having more time means I have to lose money, I wouldn’t be interested in that either. We’re comfortable (but certainly not rich) and live within our means, but taking a pay cut would make things more difficult.
I would want to know the risks associated with each option (and what the “fine print” says) in order to make my decision 😛
If it’s a simple more time vs more money option with no change to current living situations, I would opt for more money, provided it was a worthwhile amount. An extra $20 a day would be enough to cover the parking spot, a car payment (if necessary) the insurance, and gas for a second (used) car for me to get to work and would save me 1.5 hours in the process for getting to work, so it would need to be that at minimum. That would in fact give me both.
That said, having more time just means I lay in bed reading more, and not necessarily doing things that would be worthwhile for having the extra time.
I have been told I’m too pragmatic.
With more time you could, potentially, make more money if you wanted to use it all working. But I’d go with more money so I could hire people to deal with the minutia I hate doing. That would free up my time to focus on projects & activities that make me more money.