Money not enough, time not enough

When I was growing up, we lived on one income.

My mom was careful with money. When we needed to change some, she’d go to the money changer.

When I was studying in the US, she’d change Singapore dollars into US dollars for me. She’d also change money for Malaysia, because every so often the family would drive across the border for a trip.

Some days she’d drive all the way to the money changer, look at the rate, and come home without changing a thing. The rate wasn’t good enough.

I didn’t realize it then, but that stuck with me. I learned to wait for the perfect moment. To hold off until the number was right.

So that’s what I did, with almost everything. I’d put a decision off, sometimes for weeks, waiting for things to line up. And usually I’d end up having to act anyway, when I ran out of time. The result was almost always the same as if I’d just done it at the start.

It got worse once I had my own money to manage. I checked exchange rates. I checked grocery prices. I’d compare the coupons across three different stores, then drive to each one to buy only the things on sale there.

Here’s what I never added up:

The gas to drive between them. The hour and a half it took. And the things that weren’t on sale, which I bought anyway, usually for more than I’d have paid at one normal store.

I did the math years later. After the gas, the few dollars a week I was saving worked out to about $3.75/hr for my time. I had built myself a part-time job that paid $3.75/hr. And I had to drive to it.

The savings were easy to see. They had a price on them. My time didn’t, so I treated it like it was free. Time isn’t free.

What finally changed wasn’t better math. It was realizing I’d let the number become the only thing that counted. The things I couldn’t put a number on — time with my family, the relief of having just decided, the cost of the waiting itself — were what actually mattered.

There’s an old line that says it better than I can:

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

(It’s William Bruce Cameron, not Einstein, even though Einstein usually gets named for it. Fitting.)

So now I act before the number is perfect. Not recklessly; I look, I decide, and I let the truth correct me if I’m wrong. Because the waiting was almost never worth it.

What I was really waiting for was a guarantee. A sign the moment was safe. But God never promised me that kind of certainty before I acted. He wants me to act on what He’s already shown me, and to trust Him with the rest. The waiting wasn’t prudence; it was fear, dressed up as patience.

And here’s the part I only saw later: You can’t put a price on something you’ve trained yourself not to count. The thing you treat as free is invisible to you. It often takes another person to name what the waiting costs you.