In our limited time here, what are we going to think about?  That is the all important question.
–Hugh Nibley, in Zeal without Knowledge

In Warren and Tyagi’s “All your worth” they outline a simple way to keep a balanced budget.  There are three main categories:

1. Needs — 50%
2. Wants — 30%
3. Savings (or paying down debt) — 20%

I’ve looked at lots of different budget plans over the year and the simplicity of this one makes it really attractive to me.  They outline what exactly a “need” is vs a “want” in the book, so I won’t get into it here.  Just pick up the book!

It got me thinking about how I budget other things, though.  How would I budget time?  What are my needs, my wants, and my time savings (or investments in the future)?  What other categories might be important if we’re talking about time?

Money is fairly universal — almost everyone needs certain things, but the way you spend your “wants” money is a window into who you are and what you think is important.

Likewise the way you spend your free time (or even what you consider free time) says a lot about you.  How much of your time is spent earning a living?  How much is spent strengthening family ties?  How much is spent learning a new skill, or studying (and what do you tend to study)?

You can be done with this blog post right now, if you want, but I’m just going to look at a typical day for me, as best I can.

N – Sleep — 7 hours
N – Work — 8 hours
N – Eat — 1.5 hours altogether
N – Cleaning — less than 1 hour most days, but we’ll round up (that feels awful)
W – Doing something with my family/kids — 2.5 hours
W – Watching a show with my wife — 1.5 hours
N – Hygiene type stuff — .5 hours
W – Playing drums/other instruments — .5 hours
N – Driving — 1 hour
I – Reading/Writing or studying — 1 hour

So if we break that into need/want/invest we’d get:

Need – 79%
Want – 19%
Invest – 4%

Somehow I wound up with 102%.  But that’s math for you!

Anyway, I think I can argue some of the “need” stuff also counts as “invest” (doing well at my job is definitely investing in my future, for example, as is getting adequate sleep every night).  I’d love to shift it around and get more in want and invest and less in need.  The solution is obvious.  I’m spending too much time on hygiene type stuff!