At this time of year, I always struggle and worry that “there’s not enough hours in the day.” The start of Spring is a convergence of my favorite time personally and my most challenging time professionally. On the work side, tax season runs from the beginning of the year through April. Additionally, it’s baseball season for my sons, and the weather is getting nice which provides so many opportunities to be outside. During this time, every minute that I can squeeze out of my day becomes extremely valuable to me.
I recently came across an article by one of my favorite authors, James Clear. He wrote the book Atomic Habits and has had my attention ever since. In “The Value of Time: How Much is Your Time Really Worth?”, Clear goes through a process of assigning a dollar value to every hour in your day. For a financial guy, this is a fascinating approach. If my time is worth $100/hour and I can make $200 doing an hourly project, I should probably take that option, right? It’s complicated! What if you only have one available hour and your child has a basketball game? Are you willing to take the $200 over the only chance to see a game this week?
There are so many variables when it comes to time, but I know that you struggle with time just like I do. One of the most common phrases I hear during the week is: “We are so busy.” Whether it’s work, volunteering, or running kids all over town, we all have things to consume the hours in our day. We see most of the things we do as requirements, so what can we do to save the hours in a week that allow us to do the fun things in life that make us happy?
A question we need to ask is: “should we be doing some of the things that take up our time or could someone else accomplish it better and quicker?” I’ve recently paid professionals to do home projects that I was capable of doing, but just didn’t have the time. As parents, we sometimes share carpool responsibilities with other families to create a few more hours in a week. When hours are saved, we need to be purposeful in utilizing them to spend time with family, friends or other projects that are fulfilling to our lives.
A recent Mind over Money survey by Capital One and the Decision Lab, found that 77% of Americans are feeling anxious about their financial situation, and 58% feel that finances control their lives. I’m sure there are hours of worry and extra hours on the job spent to help alleviate these concerns. Our goal is to take a lot of this financial burden off our clients. We work daily to give our clients peace of mind that their investments are safe, that they have a plan, and we’ve handled their taxes. Hopefully, this will allow them to spend more of their valuable time focused on things that bring them joy.
