Summary

The author and his wife grew up with contrasting attitudes towards money and time, which now influence how they manage their own family.

Abstract

The author describes his upbringing, where his family prioritized saving money by doing tasks themselves, such as shoveling snow and mowing the lawn. In contrast, his wife's family valued saving time by hiring services, such as a garbage man and landscaper, despite not being wealthy. Both families worked hard but differed in their approach to spending money versus time. Now married, they blend their philosophies, doing some tasks themselves while outsourcing others, and are raising their children with a balance of these values. The author reflects on the changing economic landscape, where the focus is on leveraging time effectively by potentially outsourcing tasks that can be done more cheaply by others, allowing one to focus on income-generating activities or personal time.

Opinions

The author values the lessons learned from doing tasks himself, emphasizing the importance of hard work and self-reliance.
The author's wife prioritizes time over money, preferring to outsource tasks when possible to maximize personal time and enjoyment.
The author acknowledges that his parents' approach to saving money was a necessity due to their financial situation.
The author's in-laws' approach to spending money to save time was a choice, reflecting their belief in the value of time.
The author and his wife have found a middle ground, recognizing that some tasks are worth outsourcing, especially when the cost is less than what they could earn in the same time.
The author suggests that the modern economy encourages the creation of digital assets that can provide passive income, reducing the need to trade time directly for money.
The author is open to adapting to new economic realities and is thoughtful about the best use of his and his family's time and money.

Money vs. Time

My wife and I were raised differently

This could have been at either of our houses back in the day, except she had two girls in her family and I had two boys. And both of us would have had parents pissed off about the mess. Photo by Allen Taylor on Unsplash

Did you grow up valuing money because your family didn’t have a lot of it? I did.

How I grew up

We were not poor growing up, but we were closer to being poor than rich. My parents spent time trying to save money, even though no one ever put it in those terms.

We went to the dump instead of having a garbage truck come every week. We shoveled our driveway, raked the leaves, and mowed the lawn. My mother clipped coupons and drove to different stores to get items on sale. We only went out to dinner on special occasions.

Money didn’t grow on trees so why should we pay someone to rake the leaves when we could do it ourselves?

My parents worked hard on the weekends after working hard all week. They did what they had to so we could live a good life. My brother and I pitched in what we could.

Every time it snowed, we helped shovel, bundling up in our winter gear and braving the cold weather to scoop the heavy loads of snow out of the driveway. Even spending money on a snow blower to save time was beyond our budget in those days.

Our muscles grew and the hot chocolate tasted extra good afterward. In the summer and fall, we were the landscapers. When the house needed painting, we painted it. We washed the cars with a hose and a bucket of soap.

I didn’t mind the work too much. It didn’t seem like work. It was just stuff we had to do. I didn’t even realize that a lot of people didn’t have to shovel until I was in college.

We didn’t go away on vacation very frequently but my dad was able to coach all of our soccer and little league teams. They never missed a game or a school concert or activity. Despite all the time they spent working for money and working to save money, they always made time for us.

Or did you grow up spending money to save time like my wife did?

How my wife was raised

My father-in-law’s job paid him more than my dad’s did, but my wife’s family wasn’t rich growing up. But they were closer to being rich than poor.

They spent money to save time. They didn’t think of it in those terms, but they employed a garbage man, a landscaper, and a plow guy. They went to the movies and out to dinner every weekend.

My mother-in-law went to the same store every week and bought whatever the family needed regardless of price. No stocking up on something when it was on sale or bargain hunting at different stores.

My future in-laws relaxed on the weekends after working hard all week. My wife and her sister did chores, but not any that could have been outsourced. They never mowed the lawn or shoveled the driveway. When it snowed, they stayed inside, sipping hot chocolate and watching TV.

My wife’s family worked hard during the week. They were not wealthy or spoiled, but they had the mentality that time was more valuable than money. Or at least my father-in-law recognized that his time was better spent doing other things aside from manual labor.

He went away on business trips and spent long hours at the office. He missed many dinners and school functions because he had to work, but he made time for several vacations a year because they could afford to.

How it went when we got together

My wife and I didn’t grow up all that differently from each other. We’re both middle class and we lived in the same suburban town with one sibling in a family that loved each other.

She was not so wealthy that she didn’t know what it was like to want something for Christmas and not get it. And I was not so poor that I didn’t know what it was like to have a Christmas tree loaded with presents. We are both lucky. We had positive role models and good lives.

But we did grow up with different philosophies. Hers is to fix every problem by spending money on it, while mine is to at least consider spending time fixing it before immediately throwing money at it.

We compromise. I fix what I can and do the tasks I don’t mind doing, but when it comes to certain tasks, I recognize that I’m better off spending my time having fun with my kids or trying to earn money elsewhere.

How we’re raising our family

We’ve always lived in condos and townhomes where we were part of a homeowner’s association. We pay for others to plow the driveway and mow the lawn whether we want to or not as part of the monthly dues.

My kids spend their weekends playing sports, and we spend our free time watching them play and shuttling them around town all week to their various practices and rehearsals.

I want them to know what it’s like to do things for themselves, to experience the satisfaction of a job well done. To not be lazy or think that they’re too good for certain tasks.

My wife is not above working hard, just not in the same way that I grew up doing. When there are nights she wants to order takeout and have it delivered, I’m okay with it. We can afford to save time sometimes. It’s a different era than I grew up in and I’m adapting.

We spend a lot of money on things that my parents avoided paying for, and I don’t have a problem with it. We’ve both worked nights and weekends at various times, doing work for our jobs and outside of them, and we try to decide what’s the best way to spend our time and money.

What about you?

It can be hard to deprogram the philosophies you’ve always known. And the economic landscape has shifted. When you don’t have a lot of money, it’s easy to see the value in spending time to not have to spend money, but in the end, the monetary cost might actually be higher.

The idea now is that if you save yourself two hours by ordering Uber Eats or Grubhub instead of going to the grocery store, cooking the ingredients, and cleaning up afterward, you’ll actually make money if you can earn more in those two hours than the transaction costs.

That’s the goal. Outsource labor for less than you’re earning for your labor, whatever line of work you’re in. The endgame is to stop trading your time for money altogether, to instead spend your time building digital assets (like a Medium article for example,) and then selling those assets over and over again for money.

Are you taking that path? Where do you stand on the debate about whether spending time to save money makes more or less sense than spending money to save time?