November 2007 Archives

Time.

OK, many things are really more valuable than money, but for this discussion I'll be focussing on time, and how some habits that you developed before wealth may not be serving you as well now.

One of the first things we did after "winning the stock option lottery" was to exercise some of those options, sell some of the resulting stock, and then invest some of the proceeds and spend the rest.

I think we invested more than we spent. (I know we lost more than we spent, since this was also just before the stock market crash of 1987, but that's a story for another day.)

One of the things we spent money on was a new car for my wife. It was sorely needed, her previous car having been nearly totalled the year before.

Naturally we were in a position to get a "nice" car, and we did. This was 1987, and the car, a new Pontiac Bonneville, cost something like $20,000. To the car's credit, and to my wife's, it lasted nearly 10 years, so we feel like we truly got our moneys worth out of it.

Or did we?