My 3 Money Lessons on Time 🤑
Issue #58 — Time and Money. Advantage of Being Little Underemployed. Inspiration Board.
If you like reading this, feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack. 🙏
💡 Here are 3-tips to help you learn, grow, and be inspired this week!
🎓 Learn
Here are my three favorite money lessons on Time:
#1: Know how much your HOUR is worth
Did you ever calculate your hourly rate?
It’s not how much you charge for your time, but it’s how much you make of your time.
Know your hourly rate, regardless of whether you're an entrepreneur, solopreneur, creatorpreneur, or professional.
Here is the formula to calculate:
Hourly rate = Total Annual Income / 2000 hours (Assuming you work for 8 hours a day x 5 days a week)
Once you know your hourly rate:
(Action) Outsource tasks that you don’t enjoy and can be done at a quarter of the cost of your hourly rate. → (Example) If your hourly rate is $100, consider delegating any tasks that you don’t enjoy if it costs <$25.
(Action) Prioritize your attention and energy on tasks, problems, and opportunities that are worth your time.→ (Example) If you are a business owner, focus on winning and maintaining big clients instead of obsessing over what coffee machine you need for your office. If you don’t do this, you are costing your company $75/hour.
(Action) Don’t be too obsessed about your hourly rate. → (Example)When you spend your time learning, with friends and family, helping someone, or resting.
Key Takeaway: Understanding the value of your time can guide your decisions about work and leisure.
#2: One of the best uses of money is to “Buy Back Your Time”
I always thought of money to buy things (mostly materialistic).
It wasn't until I read Dan Martell's book Buy Back Your Time that I realized the value of investing money to reclaim my time.
First, calculate your hourly rate following the formula of lesson #1. That will help you understand how much your hour is worth.
Now, here are a few examples of how you can buy back your time:
Entrepreneurs: Hire an Executive/Virtual assistant by delegating anything that’s a quarter of the cost of your hourly rate. For me, tasks like Meeting notes, Blog banners, Travel planning, etc., are not worth my hourly rate, and I’m in the process of delegating most of my tasks to an assistant.
Managers: Make a list of all the tasks that you don’t enjoy doing, and someone else can do less than your hourly rate. And then, see if you can delegate those tasks to your team members or hire an assistant to help you. You can also buy back time by paying and using the right software and tools that save you time.
Artist: You can buy back more time to focus on creating your art by hiring a virtual assistant or using a platform like Fiverr.
Key Takeaway: Time is our most precious asset, and now I prioritize buying back more time.
#3: There's no such thing as Free; You pay with time or money
"Free" often comes with a hidden cost – usually your time.
It took me some time to realize that when…
I attend events just because they offer free lunch
Try a tool or software just because it’s free
Attended a webinars or event just because it’s free
… I am paying with my Time.
Knowing my hourly rate helped me assess whether investing time in these "free" offerings was worthwhile.
Key Takeaway: Be selective about how you invest your time, even when the financial cost is zero.
🚀 Growth Tip
As we are on the topic of “Money and Time,” I think you would find this article by Morgan Housel (the author of Psychology of Money) very enlightening.
My favorite takes on this article are:
Every “Knowledge Worker” should schedule some time off (by going on a walk to nature, etc.) during the day for creativity and critical thinking.
Companies should encourage their employees to take vacations.
Taking time in the middle of your day to do stuff that doesn’t look like work is the most important part of your work day.
🤩 Inspire
One of my favorite authors, Robin Sharma, talks about the power of visualization.
In other words, create a vision board of your dream life and put it somewhere up on your wall so you can see it every day.
I took his advice to create my Inspiration Board.
These are the people and one of their qualities that inspires me:
Who would be on your Inspiration Board, and what inspires you about them?
