According to Grant Sabatier, author of Financial Freedom, one of the biggest myths in the entire finance world is that time equals money.
Because, guess what? "Time is actually not [equal to] money at all," Grant says.
We're listening…
Grant explains that time is actually much more valuable than money. You can always try to go out and make more money. You can start a part-time job or get a side hustle. But your time? The truth is, you can never get back your time.
"If you always think that you need to trade your time for money, you're going to be making trade-offs — like [missing out on] time with your family — that you really shouldn't be making," Grant says.
Unfortunately, though, a lot of people actually make less money than they think, and this does have to do with time. When you start thinking about money in units of time, Grant explains, you want to calculate how much money you're actually making. The average person in the United States works a 9-to-5 job, but in reality, it's more like a 7-to-7 schedule once you factor in waking up, getting ready, commuting back and forth and so on.
For example, if you or your family are making a $60k/year salary, a 12-hour work day rather than an 8-hour work day factors into only about $13 per hour.
That's when it really starts to add up. When you're planning a vacation, for instance, you might think a $2,000 trip is feasible based on your salary. But when you're only making $13 per hour, that $2,000 vacation is actually costing you a month of your work life.
So, what if you if you invested that $2,000 instead? Using Grant's "Price of Freedom Calculator," which looks at money in units of time, Grant says that "$2,000 would buy you 654 days of freedom." That's almost two years of freedom!
Watch the video above to see how Grant's calculator works.
