At different points in my life, time, energy and money have held varying levels of importance. Sometimes, money is more important….it will be so again in a couple of years when we’ll need a bigger car; to buy a home; etc.
Right now, time and energy are the most important. When my husband switched from computer programming to teaching, I thought that my family would have more time together. We will (in the summer) but we don’t right now. With teaching school, going to school, preparing his lesson plans for the next day of school, etc, etc…. time with my husband is the most important.
The best gift that I gave my husband for Christmas was the gift of time – 15 hours a month to be exact. Let me explain…
1. My husband spends about 30 minutes a day looking for parking which equals 900 minutes/15 hours for a 30 days month.
2. I gifted him a monthly parking space. Coming from the South (where parking is plentiful) it seems like highway robbery to pay $250/month for a parking space. However, when I calculated the price per hour based on the amount of time saved ($250 divided by 15 hours) the parking space value came out to approximately $17/hour.
3. Since my husband makes more than $17/hour, it’s a better investment of his time for us to pay the parking space fee (at least during the school year – we’ll see about the summer).
On those same lines… the best gift that my husband gave me for Christmas was a monthly maid service to do the deep cleaning around the apartment. I’m so happy about that. I keep my home in pretty good condition (I think so anyway) but I hate doing the deep cleaning. At $20/an hour it’s a BARGAIN to get someone to do what I dislike so much.
In any event, I think that each family has to make their own decisions about time/energy/money decisions. For example, my husband expressed the desire to send his shirts out to be dry-cleaned (both of us hate ironing dress shirts). We had to draw the line there though. We can’t justify the expense. We just have to suck it up and take turns ironing the shirts. It’s fine though because we both got what we wanted the most.