By: DivineCaroline

Every Thursday at 6 p.m. the owner of a pasta shop parks her truck outside a house in my neighborhood and sells freshly made ravioli, cut pasta, roasted asparagus, ricotta cannelloni, tomato sauce, and more. The customers? Women who are hungry for homemade pasta and starved for time. The food isn’t a bargain price, but the shoppers don’t care. They pay for convenience.

In other words, they trade money for time.

As women finally accept we cannot “do it all,” we are increasingly happy to make this trade. I’ve got a friend who hired someone to organize family photos and also pays a manicurist to make house calls. This friend is an attorney with two children under the age of three. She has money. She has no time.

Another friend pays her nanny to start work an hour early once a week and go to the grocery store. I’ve talked to women who have their dry cleaning delivered. And their milk. Every moment squeezed out can be spent with a cooing baby, a jabbering six-year-old or a novel and a glass of wine.

Of course, not everyone has gobs of money. Choice must be made, and we make them consciously and unconsciously—all day long.

You stop at the grocery on the way home. Do you buy fixings for a homemade meal that will net leftovers or do you splurge on the prepared dinner?

Do you stay up late to iron shirts or just drop them at the cleaners the next morning? Or maybe you go all out with the aforementioned delivery service?

Do you pay shipping charges at Gap.com or trek to the mall?

If you decide to go shopping, do you dig through racks at Loehmann’s or just buy the outfit the mannequin at Saks is wearing?

Do you clean your house on Saturday mornings or hire someone to do it? And what about the yard?

|Most of us can’t afford to trade money for time at every opportunity. But I do think it helps to look at the choices for what they are. Don’t chide yourself for being lazy and buying the prepared dinner. You are not lazy. You simply want time for the things in life that really matter, and if you can afford it, there may not be a better way to spend your money.

DivineCaroline.com   is a website where career savvy women like you can read and contribute stories, reviews, and forums. Please visit our vibrant community soon.
 

Photo: Daniel Sroga | Dreamstime.com