Time isn’t Money
Challenging the long-standing Aphorism
The Aphorism “Time is Money” first appeared in an essay by Benjamin Franklin titled “Advice To A Young Tradesman” in the year 1748.
This Aphorism has since made its way into several movies and TV Shows and has since become a commonly known expression. This commonly known expression has almost become a way of life for many around the world, exchanging time for money.
But there's a big problem that arises with this model there are only 24 hours in a day and as a rational human being, you cannot work for 24 hours for 7 days a week. That would be close to impossible and a health risk to say the least.
That becomes a big problem with even the highest hourly rate in The USA being close to $120 for an Anesthesiologist who most certainly would have to go into debt to get the job in the first place.
An Anesthesiologist would earn a whopping $230,400 working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for a whole year. That is it, 230,400 United States Dollars certainly cannot be the limit and we know that it isn’t.
The issue is that the amount of money you earn is linked to the amount of time you spend getting the job done and not associated with the amount of effort you put into getting the job done.
This issue has 2 possible solutions:-
1. Passive Incomes and Side Hustles
Passive Income is Income earned essentially by not being actively involved in the process of earning money. An example would be having a rental property where you don’t have to work every day to get your rent check on the first of every month, you just have to find a good tenant. There are a lot of passive income ideas but the most common ones are investing specifically dividend investing, rental properties, vending machine businesses, and even royalties for books and video courses.
Side Hustles on the other hand require active management and can be performed on the weekends and after hours. These side hustles could be as small as editing videos for a friend in your free time and as big as starting your own Social Media Marketing Agency if you have enough time. A few Examples would be tutoring, video editing, photoshop services, etc.
Both Passive Income sources and Side Hustles help you earn more money by using less of your time so you can still do whatever you want to do during the day.
2. Effort Based Careers
Careers or Side Hustles that pay you based more on your efforts rather than your time. These Careers almost always require a lot of knowledge in whatever field it is that you are entering. An Example of these careers would be Real Estate Brokering, Successful Real Estate Brokers earn a lot of money in commissions but are also some of the most knowledgeable in their field. These People get paid the commission on the sale amount of the property and not the amount of time they spent showing the Property or clicking photos to upload a sale listing on several real estate websites.
Some of these Effort Based Careers are as simple as starting a blog or a Youtube Channel where you get paid according to the number of views your content obtains over the course of the month and the process repeats itself the next month, this creates a neverending revenue stream even if a viewer has a look through your content even if it was initially published 2 years ago, you get paid some money for that. As you keep building a library of content this process compounds over and over again as new viewers go through everything you have released over the years.
Another Example of Effort Based Careers Would be a Career in sales of any kind be it a car dealership, software, or even electronics because all these careers in most cases have a base salary + commission-based payment system where you get a guaranteed salary and commissions based upon your performance. This gets you a sense of job security during your early days and the dry seasons but also provides you the opportunity to earn a salary based upon your performances so your time is not linked to the amount of money you make.
Hopefully, These 2 ways help you make some extra money be it for the next big event you're saving up for or for the long run investing every penny you have into a well-diversified portfolio consisting of several different asset classes and remember “Time isn't Money” and if it is, you’re doing it wrong.
