We’re used to the idea that time is money. But what about the reverse: money is time?
For most of us, money comes from our work wages (as opposed to capitalists who earn income from their assets). This means that any money we spend to buy an item or an experience, we can translate this into hours of work.
Why would we do that? I think it brings clarity into our spending habits and open up new choices.
Let’s consider the case of buying a new car as an example.
In Belgium (where I live), the typical cost of ownership of a car is around EUR 6000 per year1. Now compare this with the median Belgian salary of EUR 2600 net per month. This means that buying a new car represents the equivalent of working almost 3 months of your salary per year (56 working days to be exact). Cumulated over the 10 year lifetime of your car this means ~2.5 years of your life spent working to buy and drive that car.
In this light, the questions becomes: Would you prefer buying a car, or not working for 2.5 full years (!) of your life?
Looking at money in terms of time will help you put things in perspective when making spending decisions.
In Belgium, the average price of a new car in 2020 was EUR 32k. We assume that the initial cost is spread over a 10 year lifetime of the car, and that insurance costs represent EUR 1000 per year, maintenance costs EUR 300 per year, and fuel costs of EUR 1500 per year, corresponding to driving distance of 15000 km per year with a consumption of 5l per 100 km at EUR 2 per liter. We could do the same calculation for an electric car. ↩︎
