Penny wise, pound foolish

Naval said that to be wealthy, you have to use money to save time.

His suggestion is to set an hourly rate for yourself based on your ambitious expected lifetime earnings, and spend money to save time whenever the cost is less than what you could earn.

I understand this theory, and as I have some means should be able to employ it. But I find it hard in practice. Especially when the context isn’t obvious, such as non-transactional situations.

For example, I recently lost my wireless earbuds. Replacing them with the latest version of the product I like was a decision that I made in minutes.

But also recently, a neighbour parked his car against ours. It caused a scratch, but the annoying thing was that he left his car in that position. Perhaps as a provocation. I felt like I wanted to get an apology for the injustice, but any damages they would recover wouldn’t be meaningful. It would require a social confrontation, which adds emotional weight to the transactional component of getting the scratch repaired. In this situation, I found it much harder to decide it wasn’t rational to pursue this.

These decisions compound throughout a life. The benefit of making them rationally isn’t just the saving of time, but more importantly of attention and equanimity.

Writing this as a reminder to not be “a penny wise, and a pound foolish” in one scenario, but not in the other.