The Time-Money Balance

This is something I jotted down yesterday afternoon at work. These are the musings that go on in my brain sometimes....

Time and money are very similar. We all wish we had more. We struggle to manage them, and try to make the most of what we do have.

But the one big difference between time and money is that there is a limited supply of time. You cannot borrow time. You cannot make more time than what you are given, and the amount you are given is unknown. No matter how hard you work, you will never make more time.

Yet, time is married to money. The better we manage one, the more likely we are to better manage the other. The more time we have, the more chances we have to make more money. Since time is a finite thing, we must remember that if we spend all our time earning money, we will find we have run out of time. And what is time without money? It is a prison sentence! What is money without time? A bitter irony!

The invention of money was the greatest, most life-changing, most dramatic invention ever known to mankind. Money assigned value to a great many things. Money spawned every invention ever since the invention of money. Money bought us the illusion of more time.

The time-money balance is the greatest challenge we face. We are born, not having any money, but plenty of time to grow up and develop a desire for money. We work so that we have money, and so that we have time to enjoy life. But if we enjoy our money too much now, with little thought of the future, we will find ourselves near the end of life, with more time than money. Old age is the worst time to worry about money - we have time left, but not enough time to make more money.

The key is to find a way to balance time and money so that neither overwhelms the other. Without this balance, time and money become a curse.