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Time is the most precious commodity that you could ever own. It is so precious that no matter how much money you have, you will never be able to purchase more. Once spent you can never get it back, and yet it is amongst the most wasted of all our assets.
I suppose there are many reasons, but the one I imagine that is first in most people’s books would be lack of self-worth, we just don't seem to put enough value on our time.
Take work for instance. How many times have you worked beyond your contracted hours without payment? Or even worse without even expecting payment? Uttering justifications such as "it is what it is" or "it's just part of the job", is it really?... or is it what you have been conditioned into thinking?
This kind of thinking puts your self-worth at zero. Your time has no value.
We often joke "well that's an hour of my life that I'll never get back". If you ever stopped and thought about that flippant remark you may realise the significance of those words.
We don’t often think of our time as finite, as something that will eventually end. This is to be expected as this is a daunting thought, nether the less it is true. We all have a limited amount of time on this earth, and how we use that time should be of our choosing.
We can squander our time on meaningless tasks, or we can fill it with meaning. It’s all down to personal choice.
For myself, I personally would like to spend more time on meaningful tasks that I enjoy doing. Something that I can look back on years later and be proud of, comforted in the knowledge that I made a difference such as, helping others get on top of their finances so that they can remove financial stress from their lives, as opposed to investing time on tasks that add no meaningful value to my life.
Obviously meaning can take many forms as we all have our own outlook on life and what we perceive is valuable to us. This is a good thing, as we need diversity to be able to progress as a society, and a species.
Time is your most valuable commodity and should be treated as such. If you don’t manage your time, it will drift away, lost to you forever. You need to take advantage of the time you have and put it to good use.
This is where managing your finances comes into play. It’s important that you take control of your finances before your finances take control of you and dictate where and how you spend your time.
You don't want to spend all your time chasing money, thinking that the more money you make the better off you will be.
No matter how much you earn, it will never be enough. The more you earn the more you spend, it’s just the ticket price that gets bigger. Rather than going camping, you tour Europe. Rather than buying a second-handcar, you buy a new car. Rather than buy a 3-bedroom house, you buy a mansion etc.
This is the reason most people still live paycheck to paycheck, and the reason that over 96% of the population will never live out the retirement they dreamed of no matter how much they earn.
We have been informed that the only way to earn money, is through trading our time, labour, skills, and knowledge. If we want to earn more money, we must either trade more of our time and labour or improve our skills and knowledge, but this is clearly not true.
This kind of thinking puts a huge limit of what we can earn, as we all only have so many hours in the day that we can give to work. It is evident that there are other ways to earn money, ways that have been around for thousands of years, ways that are hidden in plain sight. Having your money work just as hard as you do, is not a new concept.
Imaging for a second your money as employees and you have $3 (so 3 employees), and then imagine the roles they play:
Employee 1 comes to you fresh and new, full of value, but then sits in your checking account, and has nothing to do all day but laze around. Over time he loses value due to being overtaken by inflation who works consistently throughout the year.
Employee 2 comes to you fresh and new, full of value, but rather than this employee sitting in your checking account you put him to work in a savings account, where occasionally he must get up and do a little work to try and keep up with inflation. However, it fails. And is overtaken by the consistency of inflation.
Employee 3 comes to you fresh and new, full of value, but this employee is sent out to work in the stock market. Every day he gets up early to work and works hard. He works so hard that over time he can employ a new employee to work for you. Now, because you have 2 employees working together, they become more productive, and soon they employ another to work for you and so on.
Employee 3 not only increases in value but over time has increased the number of your employees, who in turn are also increasing in value, together they leave inflation in their rear view mirror. The longer this persists the further behind inflation becomes.
Employee 3 is taking advantage of the power of compound interest… this is why you should put some serious consideration into how you are managing your personal finances. Compound interest becomes more powerful the longer you take advantage of it. This is how your money starts to work just as hard as you, and over time can work harder than you, potentially bringing in more income than your salary or wages.