On My Own Time
WHO OWNS TIME? WE speak of “my time” and “your time” as if it were a possession we hold in our hands. But we can’t stash it away for future use, nor can we trade or transfer our allotment to another person. Is it truly ours? For the moment, let’s say that it is.
Appraising time. How much do we value our time? Some days, we treat it as a precious commodity. On those days, if we’re in a generous mood, we’ll share minutes with a friend or donate them to a cause that stirs our passions. Alternatively, we might be time-stingy. We value our seconds more than people. We zealously horde our hours, begrudging the moments others manage to wheedle away from us. Either way, it’s obvious that time is a treasure.
But we can also be careless with time. We may mindlessly go about our workday, going through the motions until quitting time arrives. Once home, we aimlessly click on internet articles or flip through television channels, lingering until the clock or exhaustion announces our bedtime. Instead of managing time well, we just manage to make it to the ends of the weeks that become months that accumulate into years.
What does it matter? If I’m indeed master of my time, who’s to say I can’t treat it as I please? Maybe no one. But consider a couple of other perspectives.
Some religions, including my own Christianity, believe time is part of creation. God is eternal, and therefore outside of time, but all else is subject to the ravages of time’s relentless passage. It’s a gift to be used wisely, like all resources entrusted to us. Though I may fall short of that mark, my failure doesn’t relieve me of my responsibility.
Even if we don’t hold this view, perhaps we’ll still admit that time is a gift. For starters, we’re given a life. Some lifetimes are longer than others, it’s true, and furnished with more of what makes us happier. But few of us would choose to never start at all. And once we’ve arrived, we’re loath to leave.
We’re also granted time by the efforts of others. Our material possessions and conveniences represent the accumulated contributions of countless generations preceding us. Do you like cooked food, clean clothes and living indoors as much as I do? Think of the time and labor our ancestors once devoted to providing these basic needs. We enjoy the fruits of their quest for an easier, more efficient life, including the surplus of time gained from not scratching in the dirt for our necessities.
Spending time. With this bonus of bestowed time comes a choice: How should we part with our portion of it? At this juncture, I’m not offering advice. As owners, we each decide how to spend what’s left—after we pay off our employer, our spouse and whomever else stakes a claim to our daily allowance of time. But I do have a suggestion, fitting for HumbleDollar readers, to amass even more time: the index fund.
Indexing is nearly five decades old, but is still a child as far as investments go. Even so, it’s maturing into a powerful wealth-builder. Its premise is both humble and sophisticated: Admit from the outset that even smart mutual fund managers don’t perform well against a simple index of stocks or bonds that represents the broad market, or can’t repeat their success year after year, and then seek to closely match the index to capture each year’s hidden stars.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with taking an active role in our investing. Since we command our time, we can spend it as we choose. We can draw upon our ration to pore over company data, searching for future market winners and losers. With the information we’ve gleaned, we might look to latch on to a growing company or seek to profit from stock price movements, whether up or down. But if even a world full of super-smart, intensely driven money managers, backed up by a team of overworked analysts, can’t outpace the index fund, shouldn’t we admit that our part-time effort is really an intensely interesting hobby, rather than the road to riches?
Saving time. I’m also not implying that hobbies are a waste of time or that active investing is wrong. My gardening indulgence eats up a nice chunk of my time, and I won’t pretend it’s the most efficient way to put food on our table. But it nourishes me in a way I think is worthy of the hours it consumes.
I understand investing offers similar sustenance to others, and that many investors are likewise cognizant of the hobby status of their endeavor. Even so, for those looking to harvest more time for other pursuits, indexing delivers the goods. Regular contributions from each paycheck into a low-cost, globally diversified index-stock fund in a 401(k) or IRA over decades can produce an enormous yield, all in exchange for a trifling amount of time.
Of course, the idea of amplifying time through efficiency is an illusion. We can’t add more actual time to our account. We just rescue time we possess from the clutches of a chore we don’t love and then apply it to another purpose. Perhaps the closest we can come to creating more minutes is striving to maximize our longevity. No, we can't change our genetic legacy, but we might squeeze a few more years from our DNA with regular exercise, healthier food and routine checkups with our doctor. This regimen may stave off death to increase our lifespan, giving us more real time.
Returning time. Back to the question I posed at the start: Who owns the time that flows steadily into our hands? If it’s truly a gift, the implication is that we do. But don’t such gifts come with an obligation attached? How harshly do we judge a child who trashes a new car from his parents, or squanders an inheritance that took a lifetime to build? To me, at least, with ownership comes responsibility.
I think it’s a mistake to think of time as my selfish possession. True, I do direct its use, much like the money in my financial accounts. But like money, I had help filling my time account, thanks to the cumulative efforts of previous generations. Even today, I benefit from and depend on the muscles, minds and time of the myriad people I live with in complex cooperation—those in my workplace, in public service and so on. Even if I woke up in a simple world of dirt, rocks and trees, and had the skills to make use of them, how long could I survive without the strength of a community to draw on?
My thoughts were tested and further refined in 2018, after my wife’s brother announced that he was relocating to Georgia for our help in dealing with his disease. Over the five years he pulled from our pool of time, until his death, my wife and I had a running conversation thrashing out the obligation we had toward him. I eventually reached an uneasy truce between my thoughts of charity on one hand and resentment on the other, but with also a growing conviction that giving time to another—within limits—is payment for that which is loaned to me. Deciding where those limits lie, however, is still unresolved.
Remember the index fund, that potent liberator of time I referenced above? By diligently stuffing it with dollars in a retirement account during our working lives, we should eventually free ourselves from our jobs. This newfound free time is teeming with possibilities. I’ll stop short of suggesting activities that I consider worthy. But during a retirement brimful of days of long-delayed leisure, I hope we all discover the pleasure of balancing our fun with a purposeful use of time.
Appraising time. How much do we value our time? Some days, we treat it as a precious commodity. On those days, if we’re in a generous mood, we’ll share minutes with a friend or donate them to a cause that stirs our passions. Alternatively, we might be time-stingy. We value our seconds more than people. We zealously horde our hours, begrudging the moments others manage to wheedle away from us. Either way, it’s obvious that time is a treasure.
But we can also be careless with time. We may mindlessly go about our workday, going through the motions until quitting time arrives. Once home, we aimlessly click on internet articles or flip through television channels, lingering until the clock or exhaustion announces our bedtime. Instead of managing time well, we just manage to make it to the ends of the weeks that become months that accumulate into years.
What does it matter? If I’m indeed master of my time, who’s to say I can’t treat it as I please? Maybe no one. But consider a couple of other perspectives.
Some religions, including my own Christianity, believe time is part of creation. God is eternal, and therefore outside of time, but all else is subject to the ravages of time’s relentless passage. It’s a gift to be used wisely, like all resources entrusted to us. Though I may fall short of that mark, my failure doesn’t relieve me of my responsibility.
Even if we don’t hold this view, perhaps we’ll still admit that time is a gift. For starters, we’re given a life. Some lifetimes are longer than others, it’s true, and furnished with more of what makes us happier. But few of us would choose to never start at all. And once we’ve arrived, we’re loath to leave.
We’re also granted time by the efforts of others. Our material possessions and conveniences represent the accumulated contributions of countless generations preceding us. Do you like cooked food, clean clothes and living indoors as much as I do? Think of the time and labor our ancestors once devoted to providing these basic needs. We enjoy the fruits of their quest for an easier, more efficient life, including the surplus of time gained from not scratching in the dirt for our necessities.
Spending time. With this bonus of bestowed time comes a choice: How should we part with our portion of it? At this juncture, I’m not offering advice. As owners, we each decide how to spend what’s left—after we pay off our employer, our spouse and whomever else stakes a claim to our daily allowance of time. But I do have a suggestion, fitting for HumbleDollar readers, to amass even more time: the index fund.
Indexing is nearly five decades old, but is still a child as far as investments go. Even so, it’s maturing into a powerful wealth-builder. Its premise is both humble and sophisticated: Admit from the outset that even smart mutual fund managers don’t perform well against a simple index of stocks or bonds that represents the broad market, or can’t repeat their success year after year, and then seek to closely match the index to capture each year’s hidden stars.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with taking an active role in our investing. Since we command our time, we can spend it as we choose. We can draw upon our ration to pore over company data, searching for future market winners and losers. With the information we’ve gleaned, we might look to latch on to a growing company or seek to profit from stock price movements, whether up or down. But if even a world full of super-smart, intensely driven money managers, backed up by a team of overworked analysts, can’t outpace the index fund, shouldn’t we admit that our part-time effort is really an intensely interesting hobby, rather than the road to riches?
Saving time. I’m also not implying that hobbies are a waste of time or that active investing is wrong. My gardening indulgence eats up a nice chunk of my time, and I won’t pretend it’s the most efficient way to put food on our table. But it nourishes me in a way I think is worthy of the hours it consumes.
I understand investing offers similar sustenance to others, and that many investors are likewise cognizant of the hobby status of their endeavor. Even so, for those looking to harvest more time for other pursuits, indexing delivers the goods. Regular contributions from each paycheck into a low-cost, globally diversified index-stock fund in a 401(k) or IRA over decades can produce an enormous yield, all in exchange for a trifling amount of time.
Of course, the idea of amplifying time through efficiency is an illusion. We can’t add more actual time to our account. We just rescue time we possess from the clutches of a chore we don’t love and then apply it to another purpose. Perhaps the closest we can come to creating more minutes is striving to maximize our longevity. No, we can't change our genetic legacy, but we might squeeze a few more years from our DNA with regular exercise, healthier food and routine checkups with our doctor. This regimen may stave off death to increase our lifespan, giving us more real time.
Returning time. Back to the question I posed at the start: Who owns the time that flows steadily into our hands? If it’s truly a gift, the implication is that we do. But don’t such gifts come with an obligation attached? How harshly do we judge a child who trashes a new car from his parents, or squanders an inheritance that took a lifetime to build? To me, at least, with ownership comes responsibility.
I think it’s a mistake to think of time as my selfish possession. True, I do direct its use, much like the money in my financial accounts. But like money, I had help filling my time account, thanks to the cumulative efforts of previous generations. Even today, I benefit from and depend on the muscles, minds and time of the myriad people I live with in complex cooperation—those in my workplace, in public service and so on. Even if I woke up in a simple world of dirt, rocks and trees, and had the skills to make use of them, how long could I survive without the strength of a community to draw on?
My thoughts were tested and further refined in 2018, after my wife’s brother announced that he was relocating to Georgia for our help in dealing with his disease. Over the five years he pulled from our pool of time, until his death, my wife and I had a running conversation thrashing out the obligation we had toward him. I eventually reached an uneasy truce between my thoughts of charity on one hand and resentment on the other, but with also a growing conviction that giving time to another—within limits—is payment for that which is loaned to me. Deciding where those limits lie, however, is still unresolved.
Remember the index fund, that potent liberator of time I referenced above? By diligently stuffing it with dollars in a retirement account during our working lives, we should eventually free ourselves from our jobs. This newfound free time is teeming with possibilities. I’ll stop short of suggesting activities that I consider worthy. But during a retirement brimful of days of long-delayed leisure, I hope we all discover the pleasure of balancing our fun with a purposeful use of time.
Ed Marsh is a physical therapist who lives and works in a small community near Atlanta. He likes to spend time with his church, with his family and in his garden thinking about retirement. His favorite question to ask a young person is, "Are you saving for retirement?" Check out Ed's earlier articles.
The post On My Own Time appeared first on HumbleDollar.
No comments have been added yet.
