When I started this blog a year ago, I used the ‘About me‘ page to tell the story of my childhood dreams of a money tree. How I planted my pocket money in the hopes that it would sprout into an everlasting supply of wealth.
Over the past year, since starting Enrichmentality, I’ve come back to this topic again and again.
Because the truth is, there is such a thing as a money tree.
‘Time is money’ wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1748, in Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One:
Remember that TIME is Money. He that can earn Ten Shillings a Day by his Labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that Day, tho’ he spends but Sixpence during his Diversion or Idleness, ought not to reckon That the only Expence; he has really spent or thrown away Five Shillings besides.
To update this slightly, Franklin is saying that there is an opportunity cost involved in deciding not to work: if you take a week’s unpaid holiday, you need to consider not only the costs of the holiday, but how much money you could have earned during that time.
Over time, the idiom has come to be associated perhaps more commonly with other people wasting your time rather than you not making the most of it: ‘I can’t afford to spend a lot of time standing here talking. Time is money, you know!‘
But what is the relationship between time and money?
