The New Corner Office: Buy time now or later

A listener asks whether to invest in her business or save for retirement

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,
the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the
new world of work or location and hours are more
flexible than in the past. Today's tip is about how
to strike the right balance between spending money in ways
that buy you time now versus investing money which can

(00:26):
buy you time later. This tip stems from a question
I got from a New Corner Office listener who manages
her own business. She noted that I write a lot
about hiring childcaren outsourcing chores. Even if you work from home,
business owners can also outsource work tasks. In both cases,
the reason is that taking some tasks off your plate

(00:48):
means that you can focus on your professional goals during
the hours that you've designated to do that. Of course,
outsourcing costs money, and so the listener noted, while you
are also pretty frugal and you like to spend your
time and money wisely, so I'm wondering how you decided
on money spent now for time to day and money
saved now for time in the future. The listener said

(01:11):
that I'm at this stage in business in life where
my business is starting to make more money, but is
also needing more time, and so I'm at this weird
fork in the money road. She could invest more for
retirement so the money would have time to grow. Or
she could invest the money in hiring contractors for her
business and outsourcing some personal tasks to free up time

(01:32):
and possibly see an investment on that too. So the
question buy time to day or buy time tomorrow. This
seems like a tough question, but my answer is yes
or really both. No one ever saves as much money
for retirement as they potentially could, and no one ever

(01:53):
outsources every single thing they could. Either, it is possible
to do some of both, knowing that when you invest
strategically in buying yourself time now, you'll probably be able
to earn more and also save more along the way. First,
you definitely should save something for the future. As this
listener notes, compound interest is an amazing thing, and the

(02:16):
more time your money has to grow, the better off
you will be. But businesses can grow too. They can
kick off more money which can also be invested, and
the business itself might be worth more, which is a
good thing if you should ever decide to sell it.
So one option is to figure out the pot of
money that you could theoretically save and then roughly split it.

(02:38):
Half goes toward the future and half goes towards strategically
buying time now so that you can grow your business now.
You may decide that that ratio doesn't make sense in
your case. There are many cases out there, but maybe
it does. You have to start somewhere then, to figure
out how to best use the money that is freeing
up your capacity. Really analyze your time. What ways do

(03:03):
you spend your hours that have the best return, and
what ways have the least. Many business owners figure out
that spending time building relationships with current and prior and
potential customers has a huge return. Basic administrative stuff like
bookkeeping might have less of a big return. It's important

(03:23):
to do and it's important to do it well, of course,
but possibly not by you. Likewise, you might be more
relaxed for evenings with your family if someone else helps
drive the kids too after school activities, thus freeing you
up to focus during business hours. The returns on buying
time can be quite large. When I finally talked myself

(03:45):
into getting enough childcare a few years ago, my business
income didn't go up by something like eight percent. It
doubled because I could actually start traveling for speeches, opening
up a business line that wasn't really there before. In
any case, my answer to the question of buy time
now or buy time later is yes, buy time invest

(04:10):
for the future. But by investing in a few extra
hours that might yield big returns, you can generate more
revenue that can help make your future really sweet too.
These are both good ways to use money, so there's
really no wrong choice. In the meantime. This is Laura,
Thanks for listening, and here's to succeeding in the New

(04:31):
Corner Office. The New Corner Office is a production of iHeartRadio.
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