Being frugal with your time

I was discussing some stuff with the finance gang, and we came up with the idea of being frugal. You know the usual stuff about being frugal with money, but there's also another less discussed but related topic - that of being frugal with one's time.

First of all, my definition of being frugal is to be efficient and not be wasteful. The action you do must be aligned with your values. So the distinction between stingy and frugal is that - whether what you do are aligned with you values. If you like being sociable, and like hosting parties and cook outs with people, then spending money along that direction is not wasteful. It's aligned with what you want to do. But if you can't tell sage from rosemary, and don't care less about food, spending money on such things will be a waste of resources. That's not being frugal. 

Knowing that, we can equally apply this to the concept of being frugal with one's time. Do you waste time on things that don't matter to you? Do you spend a lot of time on unproductive things while doing your work? Could you have reduced or eliminate time that is wasted, and channel it to something that you truly value? That's being frugal with time. 

Time is perhaps even a more limited and more valuable resource than money. You can use time to exchange for money, but it can seldom be done the other way. It's also possible to be frugal with money but not being frugal with time. For instance, you could be travelling a long distance to get something that is sold at net 50% discount to where you usually shop (even after accounting for travelling cost). But because the journey took 2 hours to and fro, you wasted 2 hours of your life travelling to save the money. For me, my per hourly rate is pretty easy to calculate. It might or might be be worthwhile to do it, depending on your per hourly rate.


That's why when I'm younger, I would go travel to far places to shop, just to save maybe $50 dollars or something on a pair of shoes. But when I'm getting older and my time is more precious, I no longer do that. I'm not saying paying the most expensive things will result in time savings. But usually good brands have a certain quality to it that a sub $10 item will not be able to match, especially if it's something that you value.


With that insight, I realised I'm not necessary frugal with money but I'm definitely frugal with my time. I don't like to waste a drop of time doing nonsense, and I don't like to waste other people's time too. That is probably the best reason to be financially free. You stop wasting your time doing non-productive work, earning money just to spend it on things that are not aligned with your values.


Ah, that's more holistic than looking at just money, isn't it?