I will preface this post by saying that I am mostly writing out of guilt. See, I promised I would blog more this year, and January through March were great, but April has been a bust. Therefore, I am writing because I feel I have to, not because I actually have the time, which will be one of the topics of this post. You will be glad to know I have been meaning to post about this very topic, though.
A few days ago on Facebook, I posted the status "Time or money?" (I think subconsciously I posted that to motivate myself to blog about it!) I've been thinking about this all week. Sometimes I choose time so I can save some money, while other times I choose money so that I can save time. When is the right time to choose time? Or money? Do we choose time when we like what we are doing, and money when we don't? Do we choose time when we feel guilty for spending money on something we know how to do ourselves, and money when we feel too incompetent (or lazy) to perform certain tasks?
The Facebook status mentioned above was met with a few responses. I am sure many of my friends who did not respond had absolutely no clue what my status referred to. I did notice that a couple of the responses were from people in the field of business. They chose money. Shock. (I love you guys!) Are there certain people who are more inclined to choose money, or more inclined to choose time? I really don't know the answer to all these questions, but I thought they were interesting to think about.
Due to all of this reflection during the past week, I decided to take note of when I chose time, and when I chose money...assuming there was a choice between these two things. Here they are:
Choice #1 - Time: Create math worksheets
Money: Pay for subscription to math worksheet printable site
I chose.............MONEY!
Choice #2 - Time: Make dinner
Money: Order pizza
I chose..............TIME!
Choice #3 - Time: Drive from school to home to let Tobi out (1 hr. total) so I could get my classroom ready for Open House
Money: Take Tobi to overnight "doggie camp" so I could stay at school
I chose..............TIME!
Choice #4 - Time: Landscape the flower beds in front of the house
Money: Pay our neighbor to and his company to landscape
(Kevin and) I chose..............MONEY!
I'd be interested to hear from you, my blog readers, about some similar choices you've made this week. It's really a neat thing to analyze and reflect upon.
It really is something to think about. When I can afford it I will pay the money to save time at all opportunities, time is generally much more precious to me. If I save time I get more sleep and am healthier, I get to play more with my daughter and see more of my husband. Teaching is a demanding profession, working a 10 hour day every day - I'll take all the extra time I can get! Of course it only works when you have enough money. So I am usually a 50/50 split, and try to choose wisely what I spend money on. :) Thanks for the 'food for thought'! It's an interesting topic!
ReplyDeleteMost of the time, Jared and I will take the time to do things like that ourselves. But these days I've been pondering spending some money on somebody to clean our house. . .so we can have more time together (since we spend about 4 hours every weekend scrubbing the house down.)
ReplyDeleteAnd what if you lack both?? Oh my life, what a sad state you are in. And, for the record, lately I've been choosing money because with 2.5 jobs, I have no time!
ReplyDeleteAnd, I want to create time to see you. Has it really been almost a year?