What Everyone forgets About Money
What Everyone forgets About Money
By Chris Reining
Washing dishes was how I earned my first paycheck. When you’re 15 years old and don’t get money from your parents to buy things then you have to work. So there I was scrubbing dishes in the filthy kitchen of a small family-owned Italian restaurant, and it’s where I learned a little life lesson.
Work is nothing more than trading time for money. A medium of exchange.
You provide one hour of time to an employer and they provide an hour’s wage. I quickly discovered teenager’s time isn’t worth all that much, a measly $4.25 per hour.
Not long after starting that job I wanted this Blind Melon album. You might remember their catchy song “No Rain.” One Saturday afternoon, wandering the aisles in Kmart’s electronics department, I saw it for sale. “Cool, I’m getting it.” The price was $16.98. For whatever reason I did the mental math to figure out the album didn’t really cost me $17.
No, it cost four hours on your feet washing never-ending streams of bus tubs overflowing with half-finished plates of meatballs. “Is this CD worth four hours of my time?”
In this case it was, but more importantly you realize the money tucked in your wallet isn’t money at all, it’s time disguised as money.
In fact, it was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Time is money.” But in our hectic day-to-day lives it’s easy to forget this.
That when you spend your money what you’re really doing is spending your time. Which means if you waste your money you waste your time.
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