Imagine if someone had all the money in the world, billions upon billions of dollars, but was locked inside a prison. Of course, this sounds extreme, but the point is, what good is having boat-loads of money and no free time to enjoy it?

The reverse of this question has to be looked at as well, and the natural question to ask is: What good is having all the time in the world but no money to do the things one wants to do? Sure, someone could have a ton of money, and start a philanthropic organization. They could give away large sums of their money to their personal favorite charitable cause. They could help their family and friends out, and I’m sure there are people all over the world that do this very thing. But the question is more personal than that, and I would have to vote for more free time. At least having my time to myself, I can figure out ways to make more money so that I can enjoy the fruits of my labor, so to speak. But to be constantly pressed for time, even though my wallet might be fat, isn’t such an envious prospect.

From personal experience, in my working life I had a very good job making films. I got to travel a lot, I saw the world, and I even won national awards for my work. But I was absolutely dying inside! Whenever it looked like there was a lull between jobs, I would try to book some time so my wife and I could take a brief vacation. Nine times out of ten, another job that was too good to pass up would stare me in the face, and invariably I would have to cancel the much sought after vacation. It got to the point where my wife wouldn’t believe a word I said when I told her there was some free time coming up, it just didn’t happen. So after experiencing this one too many times, I came to the conclusion that enough was enough. I decided to make more free time for myself, and if that meant giving up the jobs, then so be it. Naturally, one has to set aside some money so that there was enough to live on. At least, the decision was made to try and strike a proper balance between more free time and work time. But in the extremely competitive nature of the film business, this ended up to be a pipe dream. I had to leave for good.

More free time translates into a healthier state of mind and body, at least for me. Never again did I not want to have the time to do the things I wanted to do. It doesn’t always mean that one has to have a lot of money to enjoy that free time either. Even taking a walk in the park with my dog, or hiking with my family is precious. To be able to set aside more time to do the things I want to do on my own schedule (this is the important part!), well, all the money in the world can’t buy that. We’ve all heard that expression “Time is money”, haven’t we? I believe time is more important than money, after all, the time we have in this life has a limit on it.