It's Not Money, It's Time — Liberty Wealth

Our eldest child, Poppy, is 12½ years old. Something about her age has really hit me recently. Maybe it’s that she is about to become a teenager. Maybe it’s that in half of her life she will be an adult.

Time is flying and I don’t want it to.

I try to live a conscious life, a life by design and not by default. Central to that is thinking about how I spend my time. I am far from perfect. I spend too much time working, too much time on social media and not enough time focusing on the important people in my life.

It’s a work in progress. Isn’t it always?

One thing I have come to realise though, particularly as our children grow, is that whilst what we do is important, who we do it with is far more important.

I recently came across the data on who we spend our time with as we go through life.

It’s pretty thought-provoking.

You can view the flowing data here.

I have pulled some charts from Sahil Bloom’s analysis, which you can see here.

Time spent with children and family

The first bit of data that hit me was ‘time spent with children’. It peaks at around 40-years-old and declines thereafter.

I am in the decline. Every year I am spending less and less time with my children. As Sahil Bloom writes, “there’s a devastatingly short window of time during which you are your child’s entire world.”

I sense that Poppy is on the cusp of us no longer being her entire world. There’s a big world out there for her to explore. A world that will take her further and further away from us.

It’s a hard moment when that hits you.

We can flip this and think about our relationships with our own parents. This hits hard too.

Tim Urban wrote that by the time you graduate high school, you’ve spent 93% of the in-person time you’ll ever spend with your parents.

“Despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life.”

I can’t write too much about this without tears in my eyes. My parents are in their mid to late 70s. I see them twice a year (once here, once in the UK). Sahil Bloom asked the question, how many more times will you see your parents? This is a gut-wrenching calculation.

And then there’s siblings. Our time with them peaks at 15 years old. I have three siblings in the UK/Europe and not a week goes by that I don’t wish I spent more time with them.

Another data set that hit me was the ‘time spent with partner’. It is static-ish during your working years and then trends up throughout the later part of life. This chart highlighted to me why it’s so important to focus on your marriage whilst you have children. One day the children will be gone and you will spend more time with your partner than anyone else.

Your life partner really is the most important decision you ever make. (I did well here).

Time spent with co-workers

We spend A LOT of time with our co-workers.

As Sahil Bloom writes, work pulls you away from the people you love. Make sure you choose the work and the co-workers well. Ask yourself, ‘are you happy spending such an outsized amount of your life with these people?’

I know from experience the impact that working with people who don’t share your values or vision can have. You come home frustrated and angry. You take it out on, yup, the people you love. It’s not a good way to live. (I don’t have this problem now!).

Time spent alone

This is an interesting one. We spend more and more time alone as we age.

We currently have a loneliness epidemic, so this chart has an element of sadness to it. But I don’t feel sad about myself when I see it. If you have spent your life cherishing the people you love and tending to your relationships, alone shouldn’t mean lonely.

Alone should be liberating and freeing. Time to focus on what you want to focus on – reading, studying, exercising, pottering – whatever it is. I love the idea of this as I age! I certainly don’t get much alone time now!

I have been ruminating on this data for weeks. I wonder if it has the same impact on you.

The thing that has stayed in my mind is the fleeting nature of the time with our children and our parents. We only have five more summers before our eldest is an adult. Five. I don’t know how many more times my parents will board the BA plane and come and visit us here. I don’t know how many more times we will board that same plane back to the UK and find them waiting at the other end.

Time is precious. Time with loved ones should be priority.

(It’s not money, it’s time; the ultimate resource.)

But of course, life pulls us in a million other directions. Maybe this serves as a reminder to us all.

Georgie

georgie@libertywealth.ky