The dichotomy between time and money forever fascinates me. While people fully recognize money as currency, time can be viewed as another type of currency (albeit, in loosely applied terminology). Both are non-renewable resources in that once they are spent, they are gone. But time, unlike money, could be called an equalizing currency. Whereas the wealth gap has proven that money is not equally distributed among its users, time certainly is. Every person's day has the same 24 hours, each with the same 60 minutes as everyone else's day. Every person has a projected lifespan within a short range, although it is merely an estimated lifetime, much like projected returns are an estimate.
It may be a bit anecdotal (and if there have been many exceptions, they could have been forgotten) but I have seen several examples of upward mobility firsthand through those I have known. In most of their cases, the people valued time above money. In less glorified or heroic terms, they may have put more time into trying to prove (mostly to themselves) that they were right, so I do not want to give the impression that I am mentioning some superhuman people, either blessed by divine promise or naturally more gifted than everyone else around them (like almost every role Matt Damon has had). These are just regular people who were more driven at a younger age than I was. [link]I remember thinking that their ambition was misused[/link], but now that we are further along in our stories, I can wholly admit that who was wrong -- and it was not them.
I used to carpool with a colleague with whom I have lost touch (even in this hyper-connected world of today) that shared with me how his entire work day was directly tied to his paycheck. He further explained that he had marked his calendar at work to show the first five workdays of each month went to his home, because that sum equaled his mortgage. He said that, although our lunch breaks were 45 minutes, his lunches were only 5-7 minutes because that was the average cost against his current wage. He had allocated every item in his budget to his work week. It prevented him from engaging in certain activities because they were either cost prohibitive or simply not cost efficient, but he also knew how to splurge. He was just hyper-aware whenever he was splurging (and, to his credit, those activities generally benefited his wife and kids). While he may have been an extreme example, his time was correlated to his currency (and truthfully, I only remember this discussion occurring on one evening trip home, so this concept probably did not consume all his time).
I fully accept that I have been given every opportunity to succeed, probably at a much higher rate than I have used. I had a father who was very proficient in decision-making, whether in his personal life, in his financial life, or for a group of unique individuals. Both sets of grandparents were very successful, especially for the height of the American Dream when wealth distribution and other opportunities were considerably more equal. Likewise, my mother has plenty of financial aptitude herself. Therefore, I am well aware that my personal finances were skewed by considerable help, especially from my mother and paternal grandmother.
However, the biggest help that I have received from them is not any monetary gifts. It was how to manage my own finances properly, how to value a dollar as objectively as possible, and how to relate time to money (and vice-versa). Passing along that knowledge is my primary goal through these pages and in related discussions in real life.
Regardless, an old adage rings true: you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. I have learned a useful distinction between helping friends financially and just giving them handouts. If they ask for my help, then I simply give them my knowledge. If that was not the help they wanted, then I feel safe in assuming they just wanted my money, not my help. When they are interested in learning from me and applying my knowledge, then I am far more giving financially as well because I know that using my money to help them save more of their own money, those dollars will be used productively. Even then though, I know firsthand that those dollars are a minor benefit compared to gaining the wealth of knowledge of wealth itself.
