Income for Life

Time is NOT money

You've heard the old saying "Time is money," right? It's supposed to remind us that wasting time is often what costs us money. But make no mistake, time is NOT money.

I've written it before and will write it again and again: Money is replaceable. Time is not.

The credit card company Capital One recently released the results of a survey they did that at first surprised me, but the more I thought about it, did not.

The survey found that many Americans would trade more of their free time for more money. A LOT of their free time, in fact.

From a press release by Capital One announcing the results of the survey:

"... 25 percent of respondents who are employed full or part time would work every day of the year if it meant doubling their monthly income.  What's more, 35 percent of respondents would agree to work on holidays and nearly one out of five (19 percent) would agree to give up all of their vacation days to receive twice their monthly salary."

That, to me, is just incredible. Every day of the year? One in four people would trade their weekends to double their salary each month?

The survey's results illustrate a couple of things that really strike me:

1. There is probably a "grass is always greener" thinking going on with many people. So many people believe that their problems will just disappear if they can only make more money. Don't get me wrong, doubling your income is nice, but there are tradeoffs and sacrifices that would come with working seven days a week. All your problems would not suddenly evaporate.

2. People are too willing to sacrifice the commodity that is more valuable than money, which is time. Like I said, time cannot be replaced. Time spent with your family, friends, doing things that enrich your life and make you happier -- that is something for which there is no substitute.  There's nothing wrong with wanting to earn more, build your income or net worth, but it must be weighed against time cost, which is very real.

I don't know if you have kids or not, but I can't imagine explaining to mine that their dad wasn't going to be around because he wanted to double his monthly paycheck. The lesson I'd rather teach my kids is that working smarter and being financially responsible, building wealth, can lead to a lifestyle that allows them to spend LESS time working, not more.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to work hard to improve your financial situation, and it's something we all do or try to do. But trading time for money simply is not always the best deal.

Time is NOT money.

Presidential wisdom ... two centuries later

"Property is surely a a right of mankind as real as liberty."  -- John Adams

There is a lot of discussion going on right now about the role government should or should not play in helping citizens of a country achieve home ownership.

Government's role as an advocate for home ownership, for example, has been criticized and labeled one of the reasons for the subprime mortgage mess -- a mess, critics say, that was created by pushing something on people who couldn't afford it.

Even now, as the government, through tax credits and the purchase of bad mortgage-backed securities helps to prop up the housing market, the wisdom of those things is questioned.

Even the notion of "home ownership" has come under attack, with "experts" saying "rent, don't buy" and "It's not worth owning a home."

The thing is, even though President's Day 2010 finds us in quite a different position than we were two centuries ago, one of the foundations of this country is the ownership of property.

Look at the quote above by John Adams, the second president of the United States and one of the country's Founding Fathers. He believed liberty, freedom, is a basic human right. Obviously to him, that included the right to own property.

Of course, things were different then. Adams was president in a young America, during a time not long after its citizens had relatively recently won independence from England. Those early Americans who fought for their freedom did so in part because of how strongly they felt it was their right to own property -- not an easy thing for a "commoner" to do under a king's reign in the country they left.

Back then, the founding fathers recognized it was the government's role to protect the freedom of property ownership, and as the frontier of the New World expanded west, so did the government's support of property ownership. It was encouraged, subsidized. After all, the ownership of property by its citizens was one of the basic beliefs on which the United States of America was founded.

Somewhere along the course of the 225 years or so between the colonists' independence from England and today, however, that fundamental idea has gotten lost. Why? Because of a few bumps along the way?

Sure, there has been profiteering by some on the American Dream. Greedy bankers have been pegged as the enemy, with the U.S. government believed by some to be complicit, if not directly by action then by inaction when it comes to regulations. There have been instances of fraud and predatory tactics have been used on those who badly wanted the home ownership part of the American Dream.

But does that make the dream itself bad? Does that mean the government, despite the wishes of its Founding Fathers two centuries ago, should no longer back the dream? 

Two-thirds of American adults are home owners, enjoying the freedoms, the pride of ownership and even some financial advantages that ownership of property provides. Owning a home is obviously important enough for 2 out of every 3 American citizens to work for that part of the dream. Many of them will probably tell you it's the best investment they've ever made.

Believe what you will about how big a role the government should play in helping its citizens achieve home ownership. Love or hate the fact that the government is propping up the housing industry right now with taxpayer dollars. But don't be so quick to attack the notion that a government should encourage home ownership.

It's what they had in mind more than 200 years ago.   

You gotta start somewhere

This space has never really been used for political views, so this is a completely non-partisan, no left- or right-leaning assessment of some of the things going on in the U.S. economy and what our government is trying to do about it. No matter which side of the aisle you fall on, you can probably agree that things are a mess.

Recently, much has been made of President Obama's jobs program included in his proposed budget, unveiled today. The idea is to bolster small business by giving tax breaks to companies that hire new workers and give raises or hour increases to existing ones. It's coupled with an initative to provide more funds for small businesses to borrow at low costs, too.

Of course, the federations -- and by "federations," we mean "lobbyists" -- that represent businesses are saying "It's not enough." Democrat lawmakers are saying "It will be hard to make it work," and Republicans are saying "OK, but health reform comes off the table now." In other words, it's politics-as-usual in Washington.

But you know what? The proposed jobs initiative -- or at least the idea behind it -- is a start. And you gotta start somewhere.

It's a start because it FINALLY gives the government that seems so eager to put finger-in-the-dam billions here and special-interest billions there a way to FINALLY put some money toward a worthy cause.

Wealth-building.

If you think about it, that's what this country needs. Not stop-gaps. Not the false sense of wealth provided by tech or housing bubbles, but real, sustainable wealth. Money-in-the-bank, reduced-debt wealth. And where is that going to come from?

It will come from the entrepreneurial spirit of its citizens. It's got to.

It's got to come from inventors, creators of things, even if those things are ideas or services, instead of machines. It's got to come from producers of new things we need -- like fuel sources, medicine, better cell phone coverage, faster computers. Those people will drive the real wealth-building this economy, this country, needs.

Haven't we learned that Wall Stree fat-cats don't do it? Speculation doesn't do it. Paying trillions of taxpayers dollars to banks that turn around and throw those taxpayers out of their houses doesn't do it. In other words, moving money around does not CREATE money. Nor does betting more money on the outcome of those moves.

Small businesses have accounted for 64 percent of the new jobs in the past 15 years. That is who "creates" jobs -- the smaller businessman, the gutsy entrepreneur. THAT is who is most worthy of government support, if anybody is. THAT is who should not be allowed to fail. That is who will build back America's wealth if he is allowed.

So while the job tax credit is not an end-all-be-all, it's at the least a start in the right direction, finally. Mark Cuban, a perfect case of American entrpreneurialism if there was one, recently wrote on his blog that the government shouldn't just give tax credits to the companies that hire. They should also roll back capital gains taxes on investors who put their money into those companies and find other ways for smaller companies to raise capital and reduce costs.

Hopefully, the policy-makers in Washington will take notice. They propped up the banks in the short term. They saved the auto industry in the short term. They addressed the housing market in the short term. It's about time they looked at some longer-term solutions to get this country back on the path of building real wealth.

That long-term solution is backing the American entrepreneur. The jobs tax credit isn't nearly enough, but it's a start.

And you gotta start somewhere.