There are many ways to get more money and capital but time on the other hand is a limited resource for everyone. Although our time is valued differently, all of us have a choice whether to spend our time to the fullest or waste it. As investors, we have learned that opportunity cost matters because where we park our capital will severely affect our returns over time. Yet, there is another aspect of time that we often forget about and that is, time thinking about how we are actually spending our own time. In today’s post, I will share about how I feel about time as an investor outside of investing and trading so that we can all take breather from recent market concerns.

It’s shouldn’t be about the money

Planning about the future is often referred to as planning for retirement. While that is helpful to a certain extent, people who are overly focused on wealth accumulation might forget to live adequately and forget about living a fulfilling life. Many of us feel that money can buy all kinds of valuable experience and also enable us to live freer as individuals but if we forgo the opportunity to live during our prime, then I would argue that it is not a worthy trade. This is because we should always prioritise relationships and experiences more than money itself. To make this easy to understand, just imagine this scenario where all the money that most of us would make, save and invest would be less than one small spike in any billionaire’s portfolio. Hopefully, this will clarify what I mean when I say that money is not all that valuable.

Time spent cannot be reversed

Unlike money, time is one of the few previous assets that can never be bought back with money. After we have already established that money is only relatively valuable compared to time, it is also good to point out that the time that you spent to earn money can never be traded back. Therefore, we have to realise as early as possible that time spent should be well balanced to ensure that we can still afford to live life and gain new experiences when opportunities arise.

Knowing how to spend your time is most important

Before you can fully appreciate the art of investing, you must first understand about the importance of spending your time wisely. Successful investing is reliant on an investor’s ability to quickly consider about the consequence of buying, selling and holding. This thoughtful decisiveness is the key to ensuring that consistent yields are kept as high as possible. In reality we are constantly juggling tasks and responsibilities around to keep ourselves functioning well and doing what we are supposed to do. Therefore as a reminder, if you do not know how to properly spend your time, then it is also likely that you will not be able to earn consistent yields over time.

Closing Thoughts

How we spend our time will ultimately affect how we view our own success in the future. Let’s not focus too much on some aspects of life that we forget about the most important aspect which is living life in itself. Hopefully this short post will trigger some form of change in your life if you have been working too hard for money. As investors, we are already ahead in terms of finance but we can achieve way more if we are occasionally take a step back and consciously reminding ourselves to live a bit more and earn a bit less.