There are many people who earn a lot of money, but then have no time to enjoy it. How do you think about the trade-off between time and money, and what advice do you have for people as they plan the broad contours of their life?

Question : There are many people who earn a lot of money, but then have no time to enjoy it. How do you think about the trade-off between time and money, and what advice do you have for people as they plan the broad contours of their life?

Guruji : One of the biggest mistakes we all make with our money is that we fail to use it in ways that maximize the amount of time we spend engaged in activities that make us happy. Instead, we often accidentally use money in ways that seem like they will make us happy, but instead doom us to unhappy time.

Take buying a nice house in the suburbs. It seems like a great idea. In fact most Indians see owning a house as a key part of living the Indian dream. And when you buy a house in the suburbs, you’re thinking of all the family barbecues you’ll have on the lawn. But what you’re not thinking enough about is the fact that you’ve just doomed yourself to a two-hour commute—in heavy traffic—every day for the rest of your life. Would having a large house be enough to make you happy at the end of a long day when you’d spent two hours in standstill traffic? Our guess is, not so much. And so in general, thinking about how every purchase you make is going to affect your time allows us to spend money in ways that buy us happier time.

Om Namah Shivay.