By Brad Beckstrom
“It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return”. Seneca
This quote is over 2000 years old but it could’ve been written yesterday. The more we acquire, the more we need to work to keep it. The word “toil” suggests that this is not work that we have chosen, but work for someone else. Work to further another man’s dreams.
More important is the comment about “time that will never return.” Many, myself included, can be very frugal when it comes to acquiring and maintaining stuff, but often lose sight of the one thing that we can’t buy more of, and that is time. There are 24 hours in a day and you can’t purchase any more. None of us know how many of those days we have left.
There are two things you can do with this information. When you make a purchase large or small, simply ask yourself “how much time or life energy will be required to acquire and maintain this”….. fill in the blank. Will this item create debt, a loan, a mortgage, credit card interest. Really think about how much time will be required to maintain, store, dispose of this thing you’ve purchased or the closets and garages full of things you’ve purchased. Will you need to work more to pay others to manage, maintain, store and finally dispose of these things, to save yourself time?
By replacing money with time in the equation we begin to see the real cost of things.
Live Lean. Live Immediately. Place value on every hour and spend them on living versus stuff.
The Frug
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