Renewed appreciation for the above-mentioned phrase.....Well, regarding money matters, I usually don't pay much attention, but yesterday I read something that kinda stuck in my mind: people earn money by using their time, effectively their life, and so when they spend money, they are actually spending bits of their life that they use to earn that money. It made me look at spending and receiving money from a new point of view....It should've made sense from a long time ago, but somehow only now do I really realize it....
Say I'm buying fried rice. Usually I'll just pay the vendor without thinking, and that's that. But now I'll think, "Hey, I'm not only buying the rice, ingredients etc, but I'm actually buying a small portion of his lifetime, the time he spent preparing this rice for me." T-shirt from China? I'm paying for a portion of lifetime of a Chinese factory worker... Buying a book? The price includes the lifetime that the author spent to think and write about it, the time the editor took to edit it, the time a driver took to transport it, etc....And the money I receive from my parents? It's bits of their life that they use the earn that money... Freaky.....For some time I was calculating the value of things like, "ok this book cost about half a day of my dad's life, and...uhm....my travellin around Europe cost about a month of their lives combined..." Uhhh...Thank goodness they deal a lot with assets (i.e. passive money-making... the smart way to make money, really..) or I will have a real guilt trip coming huhuhu.... Really makes one think twice before dealing with money... (Well, for some days anyway..)
Which actually leaves my wondering....Why am I paying NUS Architecture while I'm the one who's spending a significant portion of my lifetime working my ass off? In a prime age, no less....
Ah well, the world works in wonderfully weird ways.....
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