The Time versus Money Tradeoff

This past week, I was faced with various tradeoffs that come down to time versus money.  My general philosophy is that there needs to be a balance between time and money taking into account that leisure time isn’t wasted time and that I can spend some of my time improving my health, upgrading my skills, or adding to future potential earnings.  Here is how the week’s tradeoffs stacked up:

–Taxi versus walking — I enjoy walking, I find it a good way to de-stress, combine exercise and basic transportation (like running errands) and a good part of a simple, ecologically friendly lifestyle.  This week, I had to be somewhere at a very specific time, very early and opted to take a taxi.  Since most of my taxi rides involve luggage or carrying lots of items, I tend not to abuse this option.

–Taxi versus a shuttle bus — in this case (to the airport), I opted for the shuttle bus.  Although this does add some time to the trip, the buses are highly reliable and the cost versus taxi is about 4X.

–Purchasing items at the nearby convenience store instead of searching for the cheaper outlet — I try to plan my shopping to not run out of things last minute and then be forced to use the higher cost option.  In this case the item was an over the counter medication, so I opted for convenience. This is one expense I will try to avoid in the future.

–Pre-prepared foods versus cooking from scratch — this past week, I was extremely busy, so rather than prepare dinner from scratch, I chose to purchase some pre-prepared items (like pre-washed, pre-sliced vegetables).  These days there are a lot of options that are high in quality and simply sliced and washed with no additives.  I try to do this no more than once or twice per week and use this as a way to avoid very expensive restaurant takeout.  One of my main motivations is to control the ingredients in the food which really isn’t possible in restaurants.

–Freelancing opportunity — I declined a freelancing opportunity which might have been good practice, but when I looked at the compensation per hour, it seemed extremely meager. I hope this doesn’t affect future freelance invitations.

I’m curious about how you would value your time versus money

shared at this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance