Money Is Time — Not the Other Way Around

As you go through life, you can accumulate more money, and if you play it right, you can use that money to work less

In the hunter-gatherer phase of humanity, we exchanged our time for food. We spent hours, sometimes days, hunting or gathering food to survive.

When the agricultural revolution started around 10,000 BC, we no longer had to hunt for food. We used the land to harvest crops, domesticate animals, and develop food right where we lived.

We started spending less time acquiring food. Fast forward to the 21st century, where we can buy food in an instant online, which gets delivered to our front door.

We rarely spend time acquiring food nowadays. Instead, we use our time to acquire money, which we exchange for food.

But here’s the thing. We take that arrangement way too extreme. We exchange almost ALL our time for money. That doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.

If we have a demanding job, we work during the day and think about our work during our time off. We’re mentally taxed with work. And let’s face it, we mostly work to earn money so we can not only buy food, but also all kinds of other things.

Start buying back your time

Here’s the point of this article. You and I spend a lot of time earning money. And in our world, time is money. To a degree, this is a good arrangement because we don’t have to hunt for food.

But since we’re spending our hard-earned money on all kinds of other things, we get trapped. We need to keep working to pay the bills. But there’s a different way to live. The famous investor Joel Greenblatt said it best:

“While to many “time is money,” it’s probably more universal to say that “money is time.” After all, time is the currency of everyone’s life. When it’s spent, the game is over. One of the great benefits of having money is the ability to pursue those great accomplishments that require the gifts of being and…