My 1st Million At 33 – yes, you can do it too

There are many things more important than money.  Health and family especially are not only much more important than money, but they are really priceless.  Sometimes, you simply can’t spend enough money to regain your lost health or the lost time with your family.

How about Time?  I usually consider my time more important than money.  However, time and money are often exchangeable entities, but not always.  You can use your time to earn more money; vice versa, you can use money to buy more leisure time.  Time and Money are really the two most important resources that we have.  Life is about trading between time and money. Most of the time we trade our time for money by going to work; occasionally, we use money to buy some precious time for our families, or buy ourselves for more time in retirement. But the fact is that we will almost always have time to earn money later (if you are not too old, and still have time).

The task that everyone faces daily is how do I do my “trades” such that I can use less time but end up with more money for more time.  One must make a proper balance spending his time or money on every item or task.  And hopefully to reach his or her eventual retirement quicker.

Although a penny saved is two pennies earned (see Tax), I always tell myself, not to sweat on the small pennies.  I consider myself frugal, but it’s important to strike a good balance between trades of time and money.  If a financial decision amounts to 50% of my networth, then I will surely spend all of the time that I need to carefully examine my options.  If the thing only involves 0.01% of my networth, then I prefer not to make a fuss about it.  But if there is a recurring event or action, then I will weigh its importance by multiplying the amount of dollar and the number of times that it will recur.  A frugal spending habit should be an important recurring action that everyone should pay attention to.  Yes, it doesn’t matter for once or twice.  It won’t matter for a couple of months, but after years and years, it really adds up.