Rich people buy time; poor people sell time. How many times have you heard some variation of this phrase?
"Don't sell your time for money."
Well, you're exchanging your time for money. And what does that mean? Selling your time for money is a sucker's bet. "I don't want to work anymore; I can't trade my dollars and hours." Our country wasn't founded on this concept of trading time. I look at it as if, when you're trading your time for money, you're always going to be limited to how much money you can make.
This is a finance bro way of saying: "Don't make money exclusively from a source where you get paid X amount of dollars for Y amount of work," which is basically every job.
There are various reasons given for why selling your time for money is a bad idea:
- You only have so many hours in a day you can work, so trading your time for money limits your potential income.
- Trading your time for money also makes you more financially vulnerable if you are unable to work.
- It's really hard to sell a course on trading your time for money (unless you're a college).
Although maybe don't say that last one out loud.
The alternative to trading your time for money is usually investing, starting a business, living a wildly alternative lifestyle, or some combination of all three. But I am here to tell you that, while this very broad phrase might have some merit in specific situations, it's probably very much complete nonsense, and you really shouldn't take anybody who says it too seriously.
At best, the phrase "Don't sell your time for money" is just another example of hustle bros needlessly bashing on regular day jobs that provide a stable living to a majority of Americans. It also perpetuates the idea that simply working a full-time job is not good enough and that a side hustle or whole extra business is mandatory to get ahead these days.
They might not be wrong, but we will get to that later.
Most importantly, the thinking behind the line "Don't sell your time for money" is just wrong. Without being a trust fund baby, there really is no way to reliably make money without investing some time. And, more importantly, trading your time for money can be a genuinely great way to build wealth, so long as you're doing it correctly.
It's time to learn how money works to find out why you should absolutely sell your time for money.
No comments yet