Time is Money

My wife and I were sitting on the couch watching TV on Friday night when I got a new message on my phone. It was around 9 PM, and most of my friends don't text that late unless it is an emergency. I figured it was one of the local county alerts that we occasionally get when there is a road closure or some other form of municipal emergency. So I was a bit disappointed when I looked at it and notice that it was a client.

Setting aside the fact that it was 9 PM on a Friday, my week is pretty full this week and I really don't know when I am going to have time to fit this client in. @mrsbozz asked if I was going to message them back and I said "no way, it's 9 PM on a Friday night", or something like that. First off, I don't want to set the precedent that I am available at their beck and call. Second, I just didn't feel like it.

My wife could tell I was a bit annoyed, and she said "isn't this a good thing, it's money right?", I explained to her that we don't need the money, it's my time that I am more worried about. I don't think she was expecting that answer, but more and more I have started to feel that way as I get older.

It wasn't always like that, when we were first married, my wife was working a second job at a local party store to help offset some of our bills. I also picked up contract work here and there like this with a core group of clients I have retained over the years. Now that we are older, and more established, the hundred bucks I might get from this job just isn't as important to me as being able to go home and relax on a Monday evening after work.

I think some of it has to do with the fact that I am getting older, but I also think part of it can be attributed to the fact that we don't really have any debt anymore. It's a different feeling when you are living each week looking towards that paycheck versus sometimes forgetting it's payday because you just don't need the money like you used to.

Yes, we have a mortgage still, and we have a loan for my wife's car, but we could pay the car off right now if I wanted to dip into our emergency savings. It's not that I enjoy having that debt hanging over my head, but it's not something that I feel burdened by.

I also think part of my trepidation about this service call is the fact that they never seem to be easy fixes these days. I wouldn't have such a problem with it if I knew it was something I could just take a couple minutes on and have fixed. I have a couple of those still. For example, I have to upload a water quality report to the web each year for a local water district. It takes me maybe 5 minutes if that to do it, but I bill them for a full hour at my base rate because that is the minimum. They are happy because the report gets posted, I am happy because I get paid to do not a lot of work.

I just have a sinking feeling in my stomach that this is going to be one of those long drawn out problems today. Or, even worse, it might be a problem that I can't fix. Those actually bug me a lot more than long drawn out problems, because then I feel like I am letting the client down. There have been a few instances where I have had to tell them to call someone else, and despite the fact that my time is more important than the money, I still feel bad.

As I look towards a possible retirement in the next couple of years, it would seem like something in tech would be a natural next step, but part of me wonders if I would like to step away from tech all together. After working in this space for 30 years, perhaps I want to do something different. I don't know what it would be (I'm not really a people person), but who knows.

Anyway, wish me luck, I actually have two client meetings today after I finish up my full time job, and I still have to get my stuff packed for a trip that @mrsbozz and I are taking later this week. I've really been looking forward to this trip, so I hope it isn't tainted by worrying about these client problems the whole time we are gone. Isn't it funny how calls/messages like the one I got on Friday night always come at the worst time?

Is time money, or is time much more valuable than that? I'm starting to think it definitely is.