'Time is Money.'

For this reason, cheap as stockings are, it is good economy to knit them.
Two lessons here; cheaper is not always better AND economy is making the best use of both your money and your time.
First - beware of the cheap sucker deals. This means, getting certain items that are of lesser price and obvious lesser quality. This is a lesson I have learned after many years of having poor washers and dryers. If you cannot afford a nice appliance to wash your clothes in, I reccomend that you do your best to find quality clothing that will last. If you have nice washers, I reccommend that you buy clothing that you know will weather the styles. Don't always shop for clothing at the bargain stores, particularly for infants and toddlers. Items that will wash frequently will show signs of wear incredibly fast if bought cheap to begin with. You can find high quality, department store clothing at equal prices if you are wise in your shopping. For example: most department stores have at least twice a year a sale that puts everything that is already on clearance an additional 40% off. At that price you are paying less than Walmart prices for Dillards clothing. Likewise for children's clothing you can find them at outlet stores when they are having their seasonal sales or find them at consignment stores. Clothing at consignment stores is better and better as the fashion is to have less kids and dress them to the nines the whole time. For those shopping for the bargain, you get the spoils of the spoiled!

The next principle is that time is as easily mis-spent as money in today's society. Because of the many conveniences of our times we are left with more 'disposable' time. If we have learned nothing else from Mrs. Child it is that nothing is actually disposable, especially not your time! If you make the wisest use of your time, you are actually saving money. There are two ways of thinking of this:

1- if Time = Money and I am paid $18 and hour, an $18 pair of shoes is worth one hour of my time. Is it worth the time I worked for it? If you don't spend the $18 you have not only saved that money, but you have saved up one more hour of your valuable time to do more wise things! Putting a price tag on your time can also work the other way around if you are contemplating "wasting time." Think, if I were to sit down and watch this TV program for one hour, will it be more useful to me than the money I could be earning doing something more productive? In reality (and I mean your reality, not some reality TV show that mimics the real thing) very few 'leisure' activities will enhance the person you are as much as an 'active' use of our time.

2- During our poorest student years, my husband and I came up with the 'time/money continuum.' we started balancing things on a line with money on one end and time on the other, much like you see a pH scale in a chemistry book. As you get farther away from one, you are closer to the other. The farther we got away from large amounts of money, the closer we came to realizing that we had more time than we did money. If we really did not have the time at all to accomplish a task, than the little money we had was used to purchase that item. The 'time/money continuum' created all sorts of homemade projects, in home dates, home made gourmet meals, and even drying our clothes on the line.

When I discovered that our clothes dryer was so inefficient it was taking over 2 hours to get a load of wash dry, I figured it would be faster to dry them outside. Yes, that took more of my personal time to hang them and retrieve them, but I didn't have the money to run a dryer for 10+ hours every week. I had definately more time to do the task than the money to fix the problem, i.e. get a newer more efficient dryer, and we already had the simple resources - rope, trees, air. No, you don't even really need the clothes pins if you don't have them or can't afford them, you just put the clothes over the rope. Because of this little discovery, I felt as though each time I was hanging the clothes I was earning $30 a month, which was really how much we saved on our electric bill every month that we did not use the dryer. Now was I not only using my time more wisely, I was saving money!

Time and money are absolutely connected. There is not a wasted minute that cannot be calculated in overall dollars and cents wasted. Moreover, how much more enriching it can be to learn new skills, test your creativity, and enjoy the work of your own hands as opposed to being wasteful with both your time and your money.