Time management is budgeting.

In one of the texts I use, financial literacy is depicted as a two-dimensional house. The words "work" and "budget" are written on each of the walls.

I believe there are several life parallels to be drawn from the concept of working and budgeting to develop a good home. This is a financial guidebook, therefore, it concentrates on money budgeting. I'd like to take a moment to discuss time management.

Most people, including me, instantly think of money during this budget-focused week. However, I believe that learning to manage your time is a precursor to learning to manage your money. We all have the same amount of time available to us. Nobody on our planet has more or less time each day than anyone else. What people do with their time, however, reveals a lot about them. Some people are perplexed as to how others manage to do so much in a single day. Those folks may claim to be "multitasking," but they simply organize their time extremely efficiently, down to the second.

Let's dive into what I'm getting at. Say you intentionally choose to binge watch a series on Netflix on a Saturday. There is an opportunity cost for the time you aren’t doing something else. Instead of watching a movie, I could be educating myself, working in my yard, cooking or preparing healthy meals, visiting others, doing community service, or cleaning the house. Maybe some of these tasks could be done at the same time, such as doing food prep and binge watching a series. My mother, for example, could watch all her TV shows while still making gifts for others. As a result, being deliberate about how you schedule your time is essential if you want to ensure that you can have fun while still getting things done.

Time management is crucial, and as you improve at it, your money management skills will improve as well. You have a limited amount of time, and you must decide how to spend it while considering all the tradeoffs. It's the same with money budgeting. Only a small percentage of the population has enough money to seem limitless, yet money, like time, is finite. As a result, we must set a budget and live within its walls.

If you don't manage your time and money properly, you'll always be left wondering where they went.