You Can Always Make More Money, But You Can't Make More Time
There's something I've been thinking about lately, and it started with a LinkedIn post from my friend Samantha Russell. Sam lost her husband Ryan about a year and a half ago. She has three young kids. And she wrote something about eight months ago that I keep coming back to, especially now, during this stretch of the year when everything in our house feels like it's moving at warp speed.
You can always make more money, but you can't make more time.
We've all heard some version of that. It's the kind of thing that gets printed on a coffee mug or stitched into a pillow. But when it comes from someone who has lived it in the most devastating way possible, the words carry a different weight. They stop being platitudes and become warnings.
The Chaos of Right Now
I'm writing this in the middle of one of the busiest stretches Theresa and I have experienced as parents. Our triplets started high school this year. One made the swim team. One made the soccer team. One's in the marching band. And then there's Mackenzie, our plus one, who made the volleyball team and plays club basketball. The scheduling alone could be a full-time job.
People ask us all the time how we manage it. The honest answer is one day at a time. Some days, we manage it well. Other days, we're just trying to make sure everyone gets where they need to be with the right equipment and at least one meal that doesn't come through a drive-through window.
But here's the thing, Theresa and I try to remind ourselves when we're in the thick of it: the next four years are going to go by in a blink. These schedules that feel suffocating right now? They're actually evidence that our kids are growing up, becoming their own people, building lives that will eventually not need us at the center of them. And that's the goal. But it doesn't make the countdown any less emotional.
The Summers Tool
One of the most powerful tools I use in financial planning has nothing to do with asset allocation or tax strategy. It's a simple exercise where I show families how many summers they have left together before their kids leave home.
I've watched people get genuinely emotional when they see that number. Not because they didn't know it intellectually, but because, for maybe the first time, it becomes real. You're not working with an abstract concept of time anymore. You're looking at a specific, finite number. Four summers. Three. Two.
And what happens after that moment is almost always the same. The conversation shifts from how much money can we save to what we actually want to do with the time we have left together. Which, if you think about it, is the conversation we should have been having all along.
It's easy to see how much money is in your 401(k), 529, or savings account. It's easy to check what your house is worth. Those numbers are right there on a screen. But it's hard to put a price tag on memories. It's hard to quantify the value of being present for your kid's first high school swim meet or sitting in the bleachers while your daughter plays volleyball. There's no ticker for that.
Looking Back with Honesty
When I look back on when my kids were younger, and I was working significantly more hours than I am today, and I still work a lot of hours, I can see places where I probably worried about things that didn't deserve the mental energy I gave them. Meetings that felt urgent but weren't. Projects that consumed weekends but are now completely forgotten. Stress about outcomes that, in the end, worked themselves out.
It's easy to play that hindsight game. If you knew then what you know now, you would have done things differently. Of course you would. Everyone would. But the point isn't to beat yourself up about the past. The point is to recognize that you're making those same tradeoffs right now, today, and you have the ability to choose differently.
That's why Sam's post hit so hard. She's living proof that tomorrow isn't promised. And I know that's a cliché. I said it on the podcast, and I'll say it here. It is a cliché. But clichés become clichés because they're true, and sometimes we need to hear them from someone who's experienced the worst version of what happens when time runs out unexpectedly.
Intentional Doesn't Mean Expensive
One thing Sam made clear in her post, and I completely agree, is that intentional time doesn't have to mean expensive time. You don't need to book a trip to Santorini to make a memory that matters. I say that as someone who just checked Santorini off our bucket list last summer for our wedding anniversary. It was incredible. But you know what else was incredible? Going to a concert I've been wanting to see for 25 years. Going up north with the kids.
Small things can turn into big things if they're intentional.
That's the part I think people miss when they hear the word "bucket list." They assume everything on it has to be grand or grandiose. The trip of a lifetime. The once-in-a-generation experience. And sure, those are great. But a backyard cookout where everyone is actually present and not staring at their phones? That's on the list too. Or it should be.
I think we fall into this trap as parents, especially busy parents with multiple kids, feeling we need to earn the right to slow down. Like, we haven't checked enough boxes yet to justify an evening where we're not running somewhere or managing something. But the truth is, those evenings might be the ones your kids remember most.
The Real Question
We tend to see time as something that's infinite. We don't treat it the way we treat money, where every dollar has a destination and a purpose. We just let it happen to us. And then one day, we look up and wonder where it all went.
The families I work with at TAMMA are constantly wrestling with this. They're at the same life stage as Theresa and me. Multiple kids, demanding careers, financial obligations pulling in twelve directions. They don't have the luxury of stepping away for a week to "reset." They're managing it in the margins, stealing five minutes here and ten minutes there.
But the question I keep coming back to, both for myself and for my clients, is this: are we being intentional with the time we do have? Not perfect. Not optimized. Just intentional. Are we making choices that reflect what we say matters most, or are we running so fast that we don't even notice the days slipping past?
One Small Step
This isn't an invitation to overhaul your life. If you're a parent of multiple kids, you don't have the bandwidth for that right now anyway. But here's something small you can do this week: pick one thing you've been meaning to do with your family, something that doesn't require a reservation or a credit card, and put it on the calendar. Not in your head. On the calendar. Because if it's not scheduled, it's not real. And you don't have as many open dates as you think.
Money is a number. Enough is a story. Make sure you're writing your own.