ON TIME AS CURRENCY

Why Our Most Finite Asset Shapes Every Choice

If money measures what we can buy, time measures what we truly live. And unlike money, time doesn’t compound. It only moves in one direction.

I’ve felt that truth most keenly in loss. When my father died, I was only eighteen. The numbers on his balance sheet mattered less than the summers he never saw. It marked me with an awareness I couldn’t shake: life is measured less in wealth accumulated than in moments missed or lived fully.

Years later, in financial planning, I watched the same pattern in others. Clients who spent decades accumulating, only to realise they’d deferred living. Retirement parties where the guest of honour looked exhausted. Families who thought they had endless summers together, until illness or circumstance reminded them otherwise.

We plan as if time is infinite. But it isn’t.

There’s a question I often ask clients now: How many summers do you think you have left? The number is finite—forty, perhaps twenty, perhaps fewer. When you sit with it, you realise how precious time really is.

We protect money with fierce attention—budgets, forecasts, investments. Yet we spend time casually, as though there will always be more. We hand it to meetings that drain us, habits that numb us, noise that fills the hours without feeding the soul.

But time is the only currency we can’t earn back.

The truth is, money and time are always intertwined. People chase wealth thinking it will buy them time. Sometimes it does. But just as often, the pursuit consumes the very life it was meant to free.

The deeper work is not about maximising either, but about alignment. Using money in a way that honours time. Using time in a way that reflects what matters most.

Because when you see time as your truest currency, choices shift. The question is no longer “Can I afford this?” but “Is this how I want to spend my hours, my days, my one life?”

If you pause here for a moment—how are you spending your days? Does the way you use time reflect what you value, or what the world demands of you?

Because money may measure wealth, but time measures meaning.