Why Money Can't Buy You Time

Some people these days, especially if they are in the corporate sector, the IT or the software industries, seem to be caught within a violent contradiction, and though they sometimes come to realise this fact, it is a realisation that, like the secular police and the religious God, unfortunately arrives too late. This is the contradiction involved in trying to save time and trying to save money at the same time, when as a matter of fact one cannot accomplish both concurrently. To see why this is so, consider the following.

Suppose you want to save money, say for your children's future education. In that case, you shall have to work more and more, and sometimes even do overtime duty. Consequently, you shall be able to save less and less time to spend with your children. Therefore, the more you save money, the less of leisure time you are able to find (Option 1).

Now look at it from the other end. The more you save time to take your children on a holiday to Disneyland, to teach them arithmetic, to tell them bed-time stories, and to play with their toys, the less often you will turn up at your work, the less money you shall earn, and consequently, the less money you shall save. Hence, the more you save time for leisure, the less you save money for the future (Option 2).

Which of these two Options is taken will vary from one person to another. An individual who takes Option 1 will say : 'Oh, I am just 28 today. Let me accumulate as much money as I can now, and I shall take an early retirement at the age of 40 in a Spanish villa with my spouse.' There are three problems with this Option : (a) s/he will probably be too worn out by the rigours of the 16 hours-a-day/7 days- a-week job by that time to be able enjoy the money that s/he is going to pile up, (b) in fact, most of this money may flow into the doctor's pockets, and (c) s/he seems to think that Death is a private secretary whom s/he can keep on postponing until s/he is ready to go. Option 2 is, by far, the much better of these two, so much so that I must leave it to you to tell me what problems you see with it.