Money is Time

Just got the latest statement from Wells Fargo and saw a $7 dollar charge for bill payments for the month of July. It happens that I only have one (1) bill payment, my car, that the bank needs to handle for me and for that they charge the amount of $7 dollars.

If there is a task there is a service and a charge. A steep charge in many cases. The argument is that "time is money". The rationale is that if you outsource bill payment, car wash, cleaning, cooking et cetera you can save time which could be spent on work. In theory, white collar work (or knowledge work as it's called in the 21st century) pays more than most "low skill" service jobs. Therefore outsourcing low cost, manual labor and spend your so valuable time on high cost, high skill work makes sense. On paper that is.

In practice this is very often just a sad excuse to spend more time at work without getting any overtime pay. The bet is on investing more time at work to get a better paid job in the long-term. It's a growth play.

But Keynes said: In the long term we are all dead. That has to count for something. And he is obviously right from an emperical perspective as well as philosophical. Outsourcing works as long as you can grow the return by hour faster than the cost of service per hour. In a world where you value all your time at market.

But I believe that some time is invaluable: time with friends and family, slacking, watching movies, sleeping, thinking, doing random things, doing non-random things et cetera. That means that your time to market is limited. I offer 8 hours per day at market and the rest has a very high premium. You might say it's overvalued. But for me it's invaluable.

So spending $7 dollars for someone else to lick that envelope and put a 37 cent stamp on my bill seems to be a waste of money AND time. I can do that on my way to my $4 dollar lunch.