BlackWindBears
BlackWindBears t1_j5lphh7 wrote
Reply to comment by CoolInvestigator in LPT: A good financial habit to get into is treating money as hours of work. Ask yourself how many hours of work something would take if you buy it. The awareness of the amount of time you put into purchases helps reduce compulsive spending. by humvee911
This is actually good though!
The point is to be conscious of what you're trading.
If trading X hours of your time is worth getting a ski lesson then you've made a "good" decision.
If imagining trading that much time for the ski lesson feels like a bad deal, then you've made a "bad" decision
It's not about minimizing spending, it's about making sure you trade the hours of your life for things you actually value as much as you do those hours.
BlackWindBears t1_j5lqkq2 wrote
Reply to comment by FTeachMeYourWays in LPT: A good financial habit to get into is treating money as hours of work. Ask yourself how many hours of work something would take if you buy it. The awareness of the amount of time you put into purchases helps reduce compulsive spending. by humvee911
Well that's the point of the book! You can never replace the hours you spend. If you'd rather trade an hour of work for an hour of "enjoyable lunch" as compared to one hour less of work for a less enjoyable lunch then you've made a good decision!
The issue is that folks think that their income is really something they just automatically spend, rather than something they traded away the hours of their lives for.
If you don't spend that money, you can either negotiate reduced hours, or bring forward retirement by that many hours (well, far more when including investment growth, but you have to factor in your risk of dying before you get to enjoy it), or use the accumulated savings to take a break from work of that many hours when between jobs.