Is Time More Valuable Than Money?

Benjamin Franklin gave us the phrase "remember that time is money." For generations, that's meant one thing: every hour you waste is an hour you could've spent earning.

But the older I get, the more I think Franklin only had half the equation.

When I was young, time felt abundant. My list of responsibilities was short, and if I wanted more money, for a vacation, for savings, I could just hustle for it. Work an extra shift. Take on one more project. Time was the thing I had plenty of.

Today, that's flipped. Between family, work, and everything else pulling at my schedule, free time is the rarer resource and even the time I do have gets fought over. Phones, Netflix, social media: everything is vying for the few open hours in my day.

So maybe it's time to flip Franklin's question. Instead of asking what your time is worth in dollars, ask: which one do you actually value more: time or money?

Here's the case for time: it's finite. You can always work harder, work longer, or let your money grow over decades in the market. But you can't manufacture more hours. Once they're spent, they're gone.

And people are starting to act like they know it. More people than ever are chasing early retirement, willing to save aggressively now in exchange for freedom later. Different paths, same underlying bet: that time is worth more than the things money can buy.

That's not an easy bet to make. We're surrounded by reasons to spend instead of save: a USC study on the psychology of advertising found the average person is now exposed to roughly 5,000 ads a day, up from about 500 in the 1970s. Ten times the pressure to buy the next thing.

The real question isn't whether time is money. It's whether you're spending your money in a way that buys you more time, more freedom, more security, more room to breathe or just more stuff.

Franklin was right that time is money. He just never said which one runs out first.