How many hours have you sacrificed doing something you didn’t want to do? Have you ever tried to quantify this?
I’ve spent over 10 years working for different corporations in a career that is not my passion. I’ve worked for roughly 40 hours per week for 52 weeks for more than 10 years. That means that I’ve given these corporations over 20,000 hours of my life — honestly, it’s probably more given that I worked longer than the standard 40 weekly hours for over half of my career.
How much more of my time am I going to allow these corporations to take away from me? I hope the answer to that isn’t another 20,000 hours.
In my late 20s, I started reading a lot about personal finance. My initial goal was to find some strategy to make my money go further or to generate more income streams so that I could work less. The first personal finance book I read was one called The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. In the book, Housel argues that money’s greatest value isn’t what it buys — it’s the control it gives you over your time.
At first, I didn’t really understand what this meant. That’s when I remembered a niche financial movement that I came across in my early 20s — FIRE or financial independence retire early. When I first heard about it, I scoffed. I thought it was impossible for people to retire in their 20s or 30s and somehow have enough money to live for the rest of their lives.
The main principle of FIRE is to save as much as possible, so that you don’t have to work in the future. When I read The Psychology of Money, I realized that the people that were a part of the FIRE movement were simply trying to take back control of their time. You are able to buy your time in the future with every dollar you save and invest in the present.
This was it. I found a way to avoid giving up another 20,000 hours of my life to corporations that I didn’t care about. I really needed to take back control of my time. And I knew exactly how I needed to go about this.
My parents taught me at an early age about the importance of saving for emergencies, spending less than I made, and the power of compound interest. I honestly was given the handbook to the basics of personal finance by my parents before I was 10 years old. Although my parents taught me about the importance of these principles, my father’s behavior never aligned to his teachings.
My father was a hard working man who spent a lot of his time working and making money. He also spent a lot of his time spending his money on a luxurious lifestyle. I still remember the big house we lived in, the BMW he drove, and the Rolex he wore everyday. He would also spend a lot of his money on nice meals, a country club membership, and gambling. He was very proud of all that he was able to purchase and the lifestyle he was able to afford.
Then one day, it was all gone in an instant. My father passed away when I was still a teenager. He was gone, but my family was left with the house, his car, his watch, and his belongings. But what we weren’t left with was a lot of memories with him. All the hours he spent chasing more money was time we could have spent together as a family. Unfortunately, we didn’t get much time together and I resented him a lot for this.
Early in my career, I was following down a similar path as my father. I somehow changed from being a saver to being a spender. I would spend almost all the money I made on going out with friends, eating at fancy restaurants, buying high-end shoes and clothes, and going on luxurious vacations. It was easy to justify the spending when I thought I had a 30 year runway in my career to make more money. I guess I was willing to give another 60,000 hours of my life to working.
When I looked on social media, this was the normal way people spent their money. People would constantly show off their nights out, vacations, and big purchases. This exposure combined with my father’s behavior led me to believe that money’s main purpose was to allow us to live lavishly and luxuriously. But as I was starting to believe this, I couldn’t shake off the principles of saving that my parents taught me and the resentment I felt when my father passed.
Why did he teach me about saving, living frugally, and investing? I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve come to believe that he wanted me to live a different life than he did. I believe he wanted me to have more control of my own life in a way that he never did over his own.
Money was a tool to buy objects and a luxurious lifestyle for my father. But when I think back to his passing, I’m reminded that people won’t remember the things you had or how much money you accumulated. I’m reminded that people will only remember the memories they shared with you or maybe even the lack thereof.
Since then, my view on money has changed. I believe money’s primary use case is to buy time. There is not a single other thing you can buy with money that is more valuable. By buying time you are able to maximize more time with the people you care about and do the things that you want to do. It may be the single most powerful vehicle to allow you to live a more intentional life.
Once I realized this, I made significant changes to how I used my money. I stopped spending money on things that didn’t matter to me. I significantly increased my savings rate because every dollar that I save today is another dollar that I don’t need to earn in the future. I started to focus on making smart investment decisions with a focus on dollar cost averaging into low cost index funds.
These are the changes I made to buy my time and independence in the future. This was the formula that my father left me to change and take control of my own life.
I’m not doing exactly what I want to be doing with the time that is given to me, but I am making intentional decisions so that one day I can. At the end of my life, I don’t want my wife, daughter, family, and friends to resent me for the time I didn’t spend with them. So I’ll continue to buy every day, hour, minute, and second that I can with the money that I earn, so that my future self can maximize his time with those that are important to me.
Are you doing exactly what you want with the time that is given to you? If not, it might be time to rethink how money can help you retake control of your time.
Welcome to The Intentional Café.
