Time and Money Untangled

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

The relationship between time and money is both confounding and fascinating.  Recent survey research suggests that people appreciate or prefer time over money, that is unless they are truly impoverished.  Older folks opt for having more time at the expense of less money as they age.  They may be recognizing their supplies of money dwindle as their free time expands once they vacate the workday world.  As for busy unretired wage earners, the metaphor that time is money makes more sense, or maybe it's cents?  As economic configurations grow more diverse, and semi-retirement becomes a way of life, the parameters for time and money are becoming much more complicated.

  I have spent years trying to figure out what motivates people more – time or money.   Money is what some call a “complexifier” when applied to motivation. Within our minds it can be either an external (extrinsic) or an internal (intrinsic) motivator – or both!  We spend money to meet our needs for self-actualization, that is to help us become the best person we can be through self-improvement or fulfillment, or by helping others, but we also allocate our resources to on extrinsic factors like protecting ourselves, maintaining security, and certainly to gain the approval or support of others. In short, money pivots on purpose and its GPS is motivation.  But how does it relate to time?

Time and dollars are both resources, but money is more so a commodity than time.  Both are potentially available to all, so both are resources, but dollars come closer to what you can can purchase, own, and physically possess as an asset.  Both can be invested, but the payback differs in ways that highlight their differences and our values.  One can produce or shrink the other, though we usually think of time as quality, and money as quantity.  We can buy time, but not always does money make it affordable.  We lose time but inefficiency is more the cause than is money even though the result may be a loss of money.

Interestingly, recent retail sales patterns are telling us that millenials in particular are spending less on tangible goods found on store shelves, and more on experiences like trips, restaurants, or theaters.  To enable this, purchasing goods or services online, or in packaged combinations delivered to our door, is gaining broad appeal across all age groups, but in particular among those whose time is limited because of work.

 The definition of workplace is unbending the connections between time and money as technology has made earning income from home more feasible and convenient.  We can earn free time as a fringe benefit from working, but it seems that Americans tend to want or need less extra time off than in many other parts of the world, like France for instance, where a four-day work week is the norm.  The more we focus on how time is used relative to compensation, the more attention we are apparently giving to quality of life.  And at least in the financially resourced parts of the world, the less attention we are paying to earning enough money needed for survival.

The dynamic relationship between time and money is nowhere more evident or more contentious than in traditional collective bargaining.  In my experience, the benefits associated with time and the benefits of financial compensation have an inverse relationship within an overall budgetary price tag.  I found that unions like to think contracts should not be impeded by any conditional connection between time and money.  Especially where medical insurance benefits come into play at the bargaining table, the negotiations often grow intense because, as bargaining agents for both employers and employees understand, over the last decade or two, the cost of health benefits has outpaced the consumer price index for the combined cost of goods and services.

What about wasting and hoarding?  We can waste both time and money, but hoarding money is easier than doing so for time because relentlessly it passes, and it cannot really be stopped or reversed.  Time lasts forever, yet money cannot because while both are quantifiable, we like to think that the world will cruise on after we are gone, but money won't, which is why we put it in trust so those who follow us will be assured it is preserved.  Of course, putting time in a trust fund doesn't work very well, possibly because it is more of a resource than a commodity.

When we steal or take time, it is typically not considered prosecutable thievery, but the same for money may lead to jail time.  Losing or finding time has its equivalent with money, but the implications differ.  Finding time seems more directly related to personal priorities because when you find it in one activity, you may well lose it in another.  While this doesn't stop us from trying to do several things at once, people like me are sequential thinkers, that is they make a choice to focus on doing one thing at a time.  Money found, on the other hand, may be a nice discovery, but by itself it does not betoken a priority, unless a Scrooge-like mentality makes earning coin an obsession.  Losing time may not mean you gain it elsewhere, though it suggests your speed or efficiency is deficient.  In other words, it is a temporal phenomenon.  No so much for losing money, which suggests you are negligent or have made a bad investment.

 Finding money and time nested together carries double weighted implications, as does losing time and money, but beware they do not always vary in a mated way.  You can easily gain time and lose money, and conversely lose time but gain money.  The relationships, as already mentioned, revolve on purpose and motives -- and on how money and time are measured.

Do money and time link to our health?  Yes of course, but in some ways we might not expect.  With money we can pay for treatments to medical problems.  And it may take a lot of time to heal.  When money and time are restricted, it can spawn emotional as well as physical issues, but as of late our health research has concentrated on the villain of stress as a cause for poor mental and physical health.  Both lack of money and lack of time produce stress, and indeed having too much unproductive time on one's hands can also create stress.  I am less sure about having too much money because I have not experienced its emotional liabilities.  What is clearer to me, and to those conducting appropriate research on the topic, is that giving away these resources to others for so-called charitable purposes produces positive health benefits of all kinds.  Motives count for sure, so charitable work as a tax dodge may not effect positive health as readily as doing so out of the true goodness of one's heart.  In any case, both time and money work in parallel when it comes to volunteering or contributing to help the less fortunate.

So what balance between these two valuable resources of time and money can be struck?  I suggest an analogy.  Let's say you are trying to connect two rods together using two bolts at the ends of the items.  If you tighten one bolt all the way, the other gets misaligned and won't go through its channel, or tighten properly.  The solution is to leave one in place but loose, while the other is threaded.  Then tighten each in turn, little by little.  The analogy fits because money and time work well as partners when you use them together for your intended purpose, incrementally and in balance. The watchword for both time and money, particularly when used in the same sentence, is temperance.

1/27/16