The better the knowledge, the better the ‘know how’, the more that tool can be uses. With a paint brush you can paint a house, but in the hands of Micheal Angelo – it was used to make works of art.

I completely agree with your concept. Just not your example.
The way I decide whether to tackle a job is:
Price + time + fun/not = “cost of job.”
I compare “Cost of Job” with “How much I make after tax.”

great post! I think that the most difficult part of using money as a tool is determining when you’re using as a tool, and when you’re being wasteful. Although in this particular case, the trade-off between time vs money was not a large sum of money. When the stakes are a lot higher, e.g. doing some kind of home renovation by yourself. It definitely gives you a lot to think about…

Interesting post. Following the website in the last years, I have seen your move from money as a crutch (debt) to phase 3, where the use of “superfluous” money becomes a question. This post links money to time, which becomes a new step in my opinion.

The concepts you apply to money also apply to time, when you look at the larger picture. Some people spend 5 hours per day vegetating behind a television (phase one, being in debt), some people realize they want more and take control of their life (phase 2) and some have control and now face the question of what is worthy of their time. Here you see the overlap of time and money, denoted by your mashed potatoe example. However, there are some things that are fundamentally different. For one: you can´t save time, only spend it one second per second. How you spend it is the big question. Money is something that can be saved and even used to create more money, via investing, but money can be used to transform essential time spending into non-essential time spending. If you had to make the potatoes, the 30 minutes was essential, but your additional money allowed you to shift the time burden to just buying. You haven´t actually saved a single second, still only 24 hours per day, but you have increased your effectiveness, measured in spending towards your true goals.

I think this is one of the main drivers for many people on this site. Getting out of debt and getting control over spending and savings is nice, but being able to to spend your life more useful goes way beyond that, and solid monetary habits help in that perspective.

Out of personal curiosity, do you think of a 401k as a lump of money to pay for your needs in the future, or as a bag of free time, allowing you to spend all your future hours as you like with no worries?

So you spent, what, $3.99 to save yourself 10 minutes. Except you had to go to the store to buy them, because you probably had spuds at home but you didn’t have this bucket, and that probably took up your 10 minutes you “saved”.

Money is a tool, yes, but this is not a good example!

Cheers!

J.D., your analysis about money and time is good, but add me to the “WTF?” chorus on the instant mashed potatoes. Not that there is anything wrong with the potatoes! But it can be a slippery slope, particularly when the analysis isn’t really true – as you found out when you used those “saved 30 minutes” to blog instead of do what you needed to do with them.

Or maybe it was worth the money not to mash the damn potatoes.

Congratulations!

Here’s to moderation in all things!

I have never looked at retirement savings as buying time for something later that I want to do. However, that is certainly a true statement.

I think the main point to remember is what is the value of your time. It is different by individual. Its like mowing the yard. Do I pay someone $50 to do it or should I mow the yard myself. Would I be making money during that time that exceeds the cost of mowing? If so, then I should probably pay a person. However, I like being outside and like the exercise, so I mow it.

get some fresh (or frozen) chives and drop a good load of little chunks in the mashed-potatoes (while they’re getting ready – actually just before they’re ready). Add a knife load of butter. boom.

“it sure is disappointing that a person comfortable and confident in their values and beliefs would turn away from a book after reading one sentence quoted from an individual that thinks differently.”

My guess is that the editor is looking to avoid causing people who are not necessarily comfortable and confident in their values and beliefs to put the book down after opening it based only on the title and cover art. Regular readers of GRS would probably continue to read past the opening quote because we would have picked up the book based on the name of the author and our familiarity with his writing.

J.D.: I presume that you are still generating income through this site, so the fact that you spent the 30 minutes saved by buying the potatoes on your blog entry rather than the intended editing does not nullify the utility of the $3.99.

“When I think of my retirement savings, I think that every dollar buys me a certain amount of future time with which I can do as I wish.”

I will print this quote and put it on my fridge

Meanwhile I disagree with this comment (#6):

“Just so you know this is a VERY slippery slope. One minute you’re buying mashed potatoes b/c you’re too busy to make them, and then you have a maid come clean your house b/c your’re too busy. You’ve got to be very careful about this..”

What is wrong with giving a local person a job, if only for a few hours?

Granted, many of us can do our cleaning ourselves, but there comes a point when hiring someone else to do the work does make sense. So why not hire a well-recommended person to do the work that we ourselves cannot do, or would rather not do.

You might be careful splurging $4.00 for mash potatoes if you’re making less than minimum wage writing your book. That’s like half an hours worth of work! So technically that was an even trade. Wait, you said you didn’t work on the book. I guess you lost $4.00 today. Oh the horror. What will the readers think???

This is why I keep reading this blog; You are so real! Thank you for sharing this and so many more honest, down-to-earth postings.

Its an advanced way of thinking about money/time management, but a good one

PLUS now you can better appreciate your own cooking, so it’s a win all around.

Probably moving all those periods from outside the parenthesis to the inside. I warned you about that!

It’s easy to get stuck in our frugal habits, even when they don’t make sense for a particular circumstance. I’m in a particularly stressful point at work, and my daughter was supposed to take cupcakes to school for her birthday last week. I already had all the ingredients on hand, and I could have spent a few hours of my holiday baking and frosting cupcakes, but instead we spent $15 for store-bought cupcakes. My daughter was delighted, because there were 4 different kinds of cupcakes and frosting variations. I usually make a homemade treat instead of buying them, because I like to bake, but the kids didn’t care, so . . . Well worth the $15 extra cost.

Now, were I unemployed . . . I would have made the cupcakes with the available ingredients, and DD would have liked those, too. And my frugal habits would have kept $15 in the family coffers.

On a separate note, if J.D. wrote a book and quoted from someone that disgusts me on page one, I would still buy it because I like J.D’s writing and I would trust that he was using the quote for the sake of context. I don’t buy books for quotes and don’t judge them by their cover. The word is not the thing.

@ #50 Scott R: I agree with you as well and I assume you were not addressing me as an “arrogant” fan of Ayn Rand. My initial comment on Ayn Rand was not necessarily one of adoration for her philosophy (objectivism), but one of disgust for political correctness in the name of selling more books.

Once again, I’ll buy J.D.’s book regardless of any particular aspect. I trust that the whole will be valuable for my purposes, because I know J.D’s writing and general intentions, regardless of the names attached to the quotes in the book.

Cheers to all for the stimulating conversation…

Kent

When my daughter was three I went back to work – having been in school since before I was pregnant until just before her third birthday. And suddenly I wasn’t a ‘stay at home/student parent’ but a working parent. AND the job came with travel and overtime.

I hired cleaners for the house. It was just a no brainer to me. I was making almost twice as much an hour as I was paying them, AND they did the job better and faster than I did. To me that made it a great deal!

I was told that it was “too expensive” and that I should just do it myself, but I’ve come to believe that said more about societies idea that a woman should be able to do everything a man does AND keep a perfect house. People were offended that I admitted out loud that I couldn’t! But in the last 12 years, I’ve never regretted the decision. Maid service is the tool that makes our life possible, and is worth every penny.