Time

Time is one of those elusive concepts -- hard to pin down what exactly it is, but we all know what it does, and we wish we had more of it.  Ask a physicist, and he'll tell you that time is just the movement of our three-dimensional space along a fourth axis.  Ask a track and field athlete, and he'll tell you that time is something he wants to use as little of in getting from point A to point B.

For most of us, time is what we spend (some might say "waste") every day with our jobs -- time to get ready in the morning, time to eat breakfast, time to commute to work, time actually at work doing that for which we get paid, time for lunch, time to drive home, time to destress after the day's activities, time to go to bed so we can get up and do it all again.  As much as we might wish for things to be different, we all stay on this same treadmill, never thinking there might be something better.

The plan goes something like this -- work 40 hours a week (or more, depending on the job) for about 48 weeks a year for 40 or more years, save up as much money as you can while buying everything you can get your hands on and hopefully squirreling a bit away for retirement, keep going until you're too old and used up to do much of anything, and then stop working and hope you've got enough saved up so you don't end up destitute and on the street before you finally shuffle off this mortal coil.  It's what so many people for the past few generations have done that we just accept it as The Way Things Are Supposed to Be, never realizing that there are other ways out there to live a life.

$25,000.  In just over three years, when my wife and I are debt-free, that -- as near as my spreadsheets are able to tell me -- is what we will need each year to live.  My wife by then will make nearly twice that.  My various jobs would more than cover that.  By then, it's also likely we'll have children.  What if, instead of the two of us working our fingers to the bone for 40 or more hours a week, we could each work 15, 20 hours a week, and spend the rest of the time we would have been at a job with our children, or working on hobbies which mean a lot to us, or volunteering to help those who need it?  Instead of a collective 80 hours at jobs, we might spend a collective 40 hours at paid employment, and spend the other 40 making our lives and the world a better place.  

See, to us, paying off the debt isn't just about getting that Magic Number to zero -- it's about taking control of our lives, making it so we can live our lives like we want to.  It's about owing nobody but ourselves.  It's about being masters of our time.

Take a second to think about that...