Time Is The Only Currency

Our department has lost a few great members, both active duty and retired recently and this post is dedicated to their memory. As I navigate the financial world and do my best to develop content that speaks to our ranks in this great profession, these losses have hit home. It’s hard not to grieve. It’s hard not to dwell on the empty voids their families are feeling. Our department’s losses have made me appreciate TIME. Time you have here on this earth. Isn’t this after all, the only thing that truly matters? Your time and how you spend it.

When I was going through the fire academy, our department and city was in a tough financial spot. In the midst of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, the dollar amount of our academy was smeared across the newspapers as an insult to the taxpayers. How and the hell could it cost half of a million dollars or so per recruit to train, articles would inquire. What many, including myself failed to realize was that TIME was being invested in each and every one of my academy mates. That TIME was being compensated in the form of daily overtime to a cadre of instructors devoted to making us the best possible firefighters. It wasn’t a throw away sum of money, it was an investment of TIME and effort. We learned the right way how to save lives and protect property and the environment. We learned how to do so, demonstrating the virtues of Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Devotion, and Excellence with every action. When all was said and done, we learned how to be TIME savers.

When you stop a fire early and efficiently, you save the homeowner TIME. It’s less time to rebuild their home. When you pull them out of the inferno and render life saving medical care, you preserve them TIME on this earth. When you bring a grandmother back from a near fatal asthma attack, you salvage her more TIME to hug her grandchildren. The examples of how we save TIME in this profession spread out into eternity over a 30 year career. What is that TIME worth?

Perhaps one of the most profound book I have read recently was given to me on loan from a fellow captain and great friend. You Money Or Your Life, by Joseph Dominguez and Vicki Robin seemingly solves the crux of how to translate your time to money. There is a lot of fluff and nitty gritty in this book, but one of the more compelling concepts in this book is to convert your time into money by using your income. You make $25 an hour at work, how much TIME of work does that new $30,000 car set you back? Is that 1,200 hours of TIME worth it? For a firefighter’s 24 hour schedule, that is 50 shifts of work. That’s 50 days away from your family. You have to have a means of transportation, but is that $30,000 car worth it? Maybe, maybe not.

As a parent to two small children that more or less demand constant attention and supervision, I am at a cross roads as to the time/money debate when it comes to cooking vs. eating out. If I make $25 an hour, and want to cook at home, consider the breakdown of this equation. Groceries for us might be $25 for a meal. There’s one hour of working to pay for that. Shopping, prepping, cooking and cleaning and doing a half assed job trying to watch my kids at the same time if my wife is at work realistically takes about two hours. If I convert the two hours to my wages, that $50 of my time, for a total of $75 for a meal. Obviously there are ways to cut corners here. I could budget, cook easier meals, and set my kids up with activities that make them happy while I cook, which I enjoy doing. We could go to a more affordable restaurant, or get take out and have a picnic somewhere. In it’s simplest terms though, what is the difference between cooking and going out for a $75 dinner? Let’s ignore the costs of fuel to drive, or on the other side utility bills for cooking. Essentially both going out and cooking take the same amount of money weighted for time in this equation. Going out allows me to fully enjoy what my daughter is dreaming of for her next adventure, or to goof around with my son as he navigates how to learn how to walk. There is no cleaning to be done, and I can be fully present and engaged with my family. We may be living check to check right now, and it may not make sense to go out to eat every night, but when you consider the dollar weighted factor of your TIME, quality TIME wins in my book. Where does investing fit into this?

You can never buy more TIME. Gold and BitCoin may have a fixed amount, and is thus considered hard money, but TIME is the ultimate finite resource. No matter how hard you try, you cannot buy more TIME. It is the ultimate currency. Through investing, you can make sure your TIME is well spent. Consider the example of going out to dinner with my family. If I invest my money in a way that takes my $25 an hour income to $50 of income, spending $75 at dinner is only worth an hour and a half of my time rather than 3 hours of my time. Imagine if going out to dinner cost you only 5 minutes of your TIME? Investing does not buy you TIME, but it damn well ensures you have a choice in how you spend it. Not all investments are equal.

If you have a million dollars in the bank earning next to zero percent interest and your expenses are $5,000 a month, you have banked up 200 months of TIME if you choose not to work. If you instead set up passive income flows that gave you $5,000 a month in perpetuity, you are worry free for life. Of course this is oversimplified, but it highlights the point that not all investments are created equally and it’s important to factor in where you stand in terms of how your investments pay you out in TIME. Money is just merely a function of TIME. Not all investments and returns need to have a monetary value.

As company officers, or hell any leader in any walk of life, the fire service especially, investing your TIME in someone will pay dividends. As parents, we invest our TIME to make sure our children become upstanding member of society. Some of these children will look to their parents as guiding forces in their quest to achieve great things. Society benefits from those achievements. In the firehouse, we invest our TIME to train. That knowledge is passed on and circulated throughout the profession for the better. In turn, that training saves TIME of the citizens we are sworn to protect. One great idea and TIME taken to teach has exponential growth of benefits as it is shared. Many occasions, TIME saved is overlooked by our critics, but TIME is the ultimate currency for every single soul on this planet.

I don’t always do things right. It’s easy to wander in the rat race of trying to get by in one of the most expensive cities in the nation on a more or less single income. It’s easy to get lost in the thick of things. It’s easy to worry about bills and the future and to put your head down and just work your problems away. It’s easy to loose TIME. There is always a better way, and I am always committed to make tomorrow better than today for as long as I still have TIME, which is why I am on a tirade of learning how to invest, and share this with you. I just want to close this by thanking those firefighters that we recently have lost for their TIME and friendship. They lived great lives, they save many a citizen’s TIME, and left this world a much better place than they found it. Their TIME here on earth was a gift to all of us, and I will always remember them for that. May you all be prosperous and make the best of your TIME.