Time or Money?

"Time is money". This adage is often heard when contract work or other time-sensitive labor is in progress. On the surface, that old proverb does indeed make sense; after all, the longer it takes to complete any project, the more it ends up costing. In business, time wasted is indeed money wasted, whether it's due to an unnecessary increase in man-hours or due to the inability to start work on another paying contract until the current one is finally finished.

But how does the above quote apply in life itself? Too many people obsess about money, and spend endless chunks of time trying to get more and more of it, only to find themselves strapped for both. No wonder so many people are endlessly stressed-out to where the tiniest inconvenience is all it takes to light their fuse. I know about this condition all too well, and have learned from it (the hard way, as usual) the invaluable lesson that time is worth much more.

Anybody who knows me can tell you that both my wife and I are borderline workaholics. We know that if we stop working, we lose everything. They can also tell you that we like to travel lightly through this life, and have little use for the consumerist junk that seems to accumulate in the average American's basements, attics, sheds, garages, and closets. This is largely because we, as consumers, seldom own our goodies, but rather our goodies often end up owning us!

The more goodies you have, the more payments you have. Even when the stuff is paid off, there is the cost of fixing it when it breaks and maintaining it when it doesn't. And then the stuff becomes obsolete, so you pawn it or sell it at a yard sale or swap meet for anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of what you paid for it so you can spend even more money for brighter, shinier, newer things that continuously evolve to keep you buying the latest version forever!

All this stuff will keep you working constantly, just to be able to afford to keep it. Think about the guy (we all know one of these) who has a pickup truck, a Camaro, an RV, a motorcycle, a bass boat, a Sea-Doo, plasma TV, surround sound theater system, and on and on and on. He's probably the same guy who works every weekend to keep the high-interest consumer loans with which he bought all his toys from burying him alive. And then he has to store, maintain, and insure them all, too!

So, when you're working like Sisyphus, when do you get any time to play with all your nifty new toys? Obviously, you don't! So what's the point of having them in the first place?

When you spend every waking hour pursuing money, you miss out on so much more than going wake-boarding and doing Jell-o shots at the Cotton-Eyed Joe's on Friday night. What about family and friends? What about your creative outlets? What about furthering your education, or even starting your own business? This kind of debt clearly robs you of more than just your money. Once you've made the pursuit of money the main focus of your life, it can even rob you of your very soul!.

Here's my testimony: All my life, I have worked mostly hard-labor jobs for pay that could be considered slightly above average. I had an opportunity to get on with a local soft-drink distributor with a reputation for excellent pay, with benefits that were flat UNBELIEVABLE! Now, even though my wife and I didn't have a mountain of consumer debt to pay off, we were intrigued at the thought being able to save almost three times as much money. After all, saving more money for hard times is supposed to be a good thing, right?

I ended my 4-year run at the furniture gallery in 2005 when the beverage distribution firm hired me on. I would be making about one and a half times as much an hour loading cases of soft drinks aboard route trucks. I was hired with the understanding that I would work an average of 48 to 50 hours a week, but this company had some sinister motives in hiring all of us, because the reality was we'd be working an average of 75 hours a week! I guess they figured that being honest about the long work weeks would keep them from hiring competent help, so the ends justified the means.

Too bad I didn't find this out until after I had already quit the furniture gallery! And I was stuck, because my wife needed some major surgery on her feet, and we couldn't have accomplished this without the Blue Cross and Blue Shield this company provided. Oh, I was bringing home an average of $700.00 every WEEK, and the benefits were indeed out of this world. But was it really worth it? Evidently not, because that place had the absolute highest employee turnover I have ever witnessed (the average new hire lasted three to five days, and I was a senior man in the department after just six weeks)!

I had a beautiful wife I never got to see (except for when I came home from work at 6:00 AM, and that's when she was leaving for her job), beautiful musical instruments I never got to play, awesome, talented musicians (friends I had since high school) that I couldn't hang out and jam with anymore. I missed so many milestones and special times with my nieces and nephews. I didn't have time to read, write, draw, jam, climb mountains, go fishing, or even just enjoy my beautiful back yard that Autumn. See, there was no set quitting time at that business. You stayed until the work was done, even if it took 18 hours straight, so nobody ever had any idea when we were going home!

And then there's the issues of health and sanity. My diet went straight to hell because there was no time to preparing nutritious home-cooked meals anymore. My sustenance depended on Wendy's, Ruby Tuesday's, Hooters, and Sonic for two to three meals a day, six days a week. My workouts took a beating as well. I was a five mile a day runner with about 9 percent body fat, only to watch body mass index explode to around 17 percent! Oh, and this company gave me a physical exam before they would hire me. It seems they would only hire those candidates with optimum health (Why? So they could destroy it?)

All of the chores and maintenance work around the house which I normally did myself I ended up having to pay someone else to do. Add that into the $30-plus dollars a day I spent eating out every day, plus the required materials for the job (which I had to pay for myself), and this 'awesome' job didn't make me all that much more money than my old job did. Oh, and did I mention that I had NO TIME, either?

I had to be on Effexor for a short while. After only a few months on the graveyard shift, I was actually losing my mind from hardly ever getting to see the sun (or my wife, for that matter). I averaged about 3 hours of sleep each work night (which didn't help my mental state any at all), and would usually spend my Sundays sleeping all day long. I went from having the occasional beer with my boys to drinking almost every night, with or without the boys. This situation put so much strain on Luchrisa and I, on top of her painful foot problems. Believe me when I say this was the closest our marriage has ever come to being finished forever (and we have been through many, many hard and awful times that have easily destroyed other couples)!

As soon as she was healed and rehabbed, I again started job hunting, and found the job at which I am currently employed. Oh, we pull the occasional long weeks and long hours when the need arises, but even on a seven-day week, I average 56-60 hours. And I pay almost twice for the benefits at this new job, and take home about half the money each week. But when I took the new job, almost immediately, my mind, body, and marriage began to heal.

And, because I go home at the exact same time every day, I can actually have a purpose-filled life once again. I have I have been slowly getting my old body back (which at 40, isn't easy to do!), and have been happily writing, reading, jamming, being a husband and uncle, and making my OWN money for the past 2 years. The huge hit on my income is a very small price to pay to have my life back again!

Seriously, dear reader, was everything I mentioned above worth holding onto a job like that just to take home $700.00 a week? Hell, no, it ain't! If you believe so, then you need to quit buying so much crap and get your priorities straight. After all, no one on their deathbed has ever said "If only I had spent more time down at the plant"!

I leave you with a parable that came to me while pondering the question one night several years back.

'If you accidentally drop a $100 bill down the sewer, it may piss you off royally, but someday, if you have any work ethic at all, you will make that $100 back again, and then some! However, if you waste a day doing something pointless, that time is gone forever, and there's no way to ever earn it back again.'

Remember the above if you ever find yourself questioning the value of time over money. Time is not just precious, it's PRICELESS!