While checking out the latest updates of Elon Musk’s newest plaything, Twitter, I came across an interesting concept.
Time Billionaires
The idea was first coined by the investor Graham Duncan, and refers to people who have approximately 1 billion seconds left to live.
1 billion seconds is about 31 years, so considering that the average human lifespan is 79 years, at 20 years old you have about 2 billion seconds left, and by the time you get to 50 this has halved to about 1 billion seconds.
”That’s great!” you think “but what’s any of this got to do with personal finance?”
I’m very glad you asked...
“Time is Money”
Three words in contention for possibly the most cliché phrase that exists in the world of business.
The problem though, is that clichés often exist for a reason, and that’s because there’s truth to them.
We trade our time for money through work, yet when we have wealth, we trade it for more time. We put our heads down and focus on working hard, and by the time we look up, we’re retiring, with so much of our life a blur in the rear view mirror.
The days are long, but the years are short.
This doesn’t mean that we can buy more time. Unfortunately we all come with a sell by date, and death is something that will happen for all of us.
Here, the sense of “more time” refers to the possibility of being able to spend more time doing the things that you love, that make you feel alive.
This was something I recently discovered for myself through the wonders of grocery deliveries, of all things.
You see, here in Spain (where I live) it’s not anywhere near as common to have your food shopping delivered as it is in somewhere like the UK. As a result, here it usually costs more money, and I could never really justify it, especially when the shops are normally walking distance.
So every week I would go to the supermarket with my little food carrier on wheels, do the shopping and load it up to bring it home.
The whole process took approximately an hour.
Then, I was listening to a podcast the other day, where the person being interviewed was talking about how they would drive around town looking for the best deals on berries, making sure that he got the best prices on everything. If he found something cheaper, he would actually get back in his car and return to the original store to refund his money.
I’m not sure what his fuel costs to savings earned ratio was, but it can’t have been efficient.
But what was even more mind-blowing was the amount of time that he spent doing this.
He was easily spending 5-6 hours A WEEK just doing grocery shopping.
And that wasn’t even the best bit.
He was also a multi-millionaire with a net worth of $8 million!
Initially, like most people, I laughed at the insaneness of the situation. But then I realised that there were certainly instances where I could spend money to save time.
Hence the online groceries.
Rather than the journey to and from the supermarket, with home delivery you can order everything you need in the space of 10 minutes and have it brought to your front door. Once you know what you order, on a weekly basis, you can even save a standard shopping list and add and subtract items as needed.
All of a sudden, I just created an extra 50 minutes in my week.
The cost? Significantly less than the value of the time saved.
Suddenly, I started seeing inefficiencies everywhere. How long do you spend looking for a free parking space because you don’t want to pay for one at the car park? Or trying to do home DIY projects to avoid paying someone to do the job, and then having to pay them to undo your attempt and then do it anyway.
Now, I don’t share this story to make fun of people who want to make sure they get they get the best deal on blueberries.
I share it to highlight the way we lose touch with what is important.
You see, your time is a finite resource.
You’re never going to get that back, so you might as well spend it doing as much of what is important to you as possible.
Be ruthless in it’s defence.
Time to be with your family, to be in nature, to read or any other number of things that count more towards a life well lived than the balance of your bank account.
And if that defense involves spending a bit of money, then so be it.
Have a great bank holiday weekend!
Felix