It was a rush of excitement mixed with sheer panic that coursed through me as I bolted out of bed at the sound of my 5:00am alarm.
Excitement because I was on my first construction project with my new company, less than a year removed from graduating college. I was working for a well established and reputable company doing important work and I had an opportunity to learn new things every day.
Sheer panic because the site was an hour drive from my house, and I was the one with the key to open the doors to let everyone in in the morning. Construction starts at 7:00am. I pictured the tired, weathered faces of the dozens of tradesmen lined up outside the door, lunch boxes hanging from their shoulders, tool belts weighing heavily around their midsections, just waiting for me to show up. The thought of their blank stares watching as I, a young college kid knowing nothing about construction, stumbled nervously through their apathetic gauntlet as I fumbled with the key at 6:55am to unlock the door to begin the day drove me up and out of the house every morning before sunrise, hitting the pavement with the commuters of South Florida. And this was just unlocking the front door, I haven’t even started the day and the unending list of problems that were sure to come up.
As the years have passed, the story has evolved, but the basic components of an early alarm clock, challenging work conditions, and stress remain unchanged. Compensation has increased in step with responsibility, which has led to the theme post of this blog.
What we are writing about
The theme for this blog comes from a scripture in the Bible that, in one translation, reads:
So keep strict watch that how you walk is not as unwise but as wise persons, buying out the opportune time for yourselves
Ephesians 5:15,16
The logical first question is, what does “buying out time” mean? Is it the same as “making time” for something? We all understand that concept – i.e. it’s important to make time in the day to exercise. But the verse is not making time, it’s buying out time. We all have the same amount of it, 24 hours a day, and it’s given to us, so how can we buy it?
We can’t buy more hours in a day, no matter how much money we’re willing to spend. I can’t buy another couple hours of sleep those mornings at 5am, and I can’t buy an extra hour with my wife at the end of an extended work day. A transaction of currency for minutes or hours can never happen. But we CAN, however, TRADE time. We can subtract time from doing one thing, in order to add time doing something else. If we make these decisions intentionally, it can have a freeing effect on us, like a bird choosing where it wants to fly to, unobstructed by roads or paths built by others. This is different than working for a living, where we trade time for money.
As a married individual for 7 years, an employee at the same construction company for 11 years, and a dedicated and baptized member of a local congregation for 20 years, I have a pretty good grasp of the time requirement of each. I’ve managed to establish a best friend partnership with my wife, build a secular career from college graduate to management level, and continue to grow in the congregation, among other pursuits and interests. I allocate a portion of my time to each area. But this is not a mere summary of what I have done in the past. This is about what I am planning for the future – what all of us will benefit from spending our valuable time to plan.
Needing to wake up before sunrise and maneuver a speeding motor vehicle alongside other speeding motor vehicles for 50 miles is stressful enough. Having the secular problems of the day floating through your head compounds that stress – couple that with some personal drama at home and you’re teetering on the edge. The final blow may be once you’ve taken stock of your financial picture and realize with a twinge of dread that you’re stuck to continue this routine, because you have no other option. Now that stressful moment has become your stressful life.
But There’s Hope
Buy Out The Time is our story of how we have educated ourselves on our finances, and started being more in control of why we work, what we work on, and how much we work. A grueling daily routine can make it difficult to find the time to contemplate why you’re really doing it. The demands on our time, the accessibility of technology keeps us on the move, all the time. Living in a big city like Miami adds to this overload. But if you want to buy out the time for more important things, and you don’t make an effort now to take stock of how you’re spending your time and money, when will you?
Buy Out The Time is about a trade between the life that we were accustomed to, that we were used to, and something better. We were accustomed to our life not because it was amazing, but because we are practical people and hadn’t seriously considered an alternative. It was reasonable to us to both work full time, try our best in the congregation, take some fun vacations, and if things continue like this, retire one day to a life similar to that of our parents. The driving reason behind not considering alternatives was we had no awareness of our finances – what we were bringing in, what we owed, and what how much our goals for the future would cost. We spent for convenience, without an understanding of the bigger picture and without regard for the long term compound effects. Our spending wasn’t in a way that brought value to our lives; it wasn’t intentional. We saved a little here and there, but only enough to satisfy the small voice inside that said “you should be saving something”. It wasn’t purposeful; it wasn’t focused.
Buy Out The Time will document our journey through this chapter of our lives, matching up our long term goals with immediate, practical, financial moves to make them happen. To start, we have some exciting news to share of how we recently applied the personal finance strategies we explore in this blog to do exactly that – buy out more time for the things we love. Stay tuned!!