Investing to Maximise Time and Quality of Life
Choosing not to save doesn’t necessarily mean being wasteful or extravagant. In fact, when you think about it rationally, it often serves as a wise investment to maximise both time and happiness. Let’s consider why saving money isn’t always the best choice, and how we can use our time more effectively.
One of the small daily pleasures of living in the UK is enjoying cookies. At any supermarket, you can find delicious cookies—chocolate chunk, Belgian chocolate, salted caramel, and many more, making the selection a joy. The price is around £1.50 to £2 for four or five cookies. Although London is an expensive city, buying the same quality cookies in Japan would cost around 180 yen each, making British cookies more of a bargain in comparison.
However, over the past year, inflation has gone up, and cookie prices have risen by 30 to 40 pence. With this inflation, some may consider saving money. However, I choose not to stop buying cookies.
The biggest advantage of saving is reducing expenses, but it often comes at the cost of reducing quality of life (QOL). For instance, if you decide not to buy cookies to save a small amount of money, you lose that daily pleasure. Weighing up this trade-off, I find that it’s better for me to keep buying cookies.
A lower quality of life can have an impact both physically and mentally. If your concentration decreases or your work efficiency drops, the loss may outweigh the money saved. Also, the amount of money saved by scrimping is often quite limited. If you are living within your means and not wasting money, the benefits of saving aren’t that significant. Buying cookies isn’t a “luxury”—it’s a small daily joy. The happiness gained from spending a small amount of money can reduce stress and improve mental health, making a cookies under £2 a worthy investment.
Not saving isn’t necessarily about luxury or extravagance. Logically speaking, the opposite of saving is simply “not saving,” not luxury. For someone who is living within their means, what they lose by saving can be greater than what they gain.
Moreover, it is often more rational to spend money to save time. For example, if you save money by cooking at home, you end up spending time cooking and shopping. If you live far from the station to save on rent, your commuting time increases. By spending time saving money, you reduce the time available for work, study, or relaxation. If you push yourself too much to save and end up harming your physical or mental well-being, recovering from that takes a lot of time too.
Consider an engineer who earns £30 an hour. For this engineer, not cooking at home and instead working for an hour to pay for eating out might be more efficient. Instead of spending an hour cooking with £5 worth of groceries, it would make more sense to work overtime for £30 and have a £20 meal, which also allows them to enjoy a better meal and have some spare time.
The same logic applies to activities like volunteering. Suppose this engineer spends five hours volunteering and raises £100. If they worked in their own field for five hours, earned £150 yen, and donated that amount instead, they could make a greater contribution. How we use our time is important, and saving isn’t always the best choice.
If saving or volunteering is enjoyable for you, then it’s certainly valuable. But if not, paying to save time can be the smarter choice. If everyone maximises their strengths, the value of society as a whole increases.
Even while living in expensive London, I choose not to save to maintain my physical and mental health and secure productive time. I don’t indulge in luxuries, but I don’t save either. I buy cookies several times a week, visit cafés to focus, purchase lots of books, and enjoy beef steaks.
By choosing not to save, I create physical, mental, and time flexibility, which I use for studying, skill improvement, and recovery. Not saving and spending money is, in fact, an investment in the future.