Allocating Assets
20190916 00118 2 minutes

Have you ever thought about how you are going to spend the rest of your life? Or talked about how you spent the weekend?

That’s an unusual use of “spend.”

When we talk about “spending” it is usually in the context of money: to exchange one asset for another, or to use an asset to discharge a liability. We plan how to use the asset to best advantage – usually! Sometimes, of course, we also fritter away the asset and have little to see for it. And then there are those of whom we say: “money just slips between their fingers.”

When we think of “spending” time we mean using it, or living through it. We seldom really think of it as an asset to be apportioned or planned for, as we would money, or any other asset. It’s just there, to be lived through, with occasional events to be given priority and scheduled, but meals and the usual necessities of life are just there, to be accommodated. The idea that time is an asset, to be allocated and “spent” is not how we usually consider it. Certainly that was not the way my education portrayed it.

The other day I played with one of those e-mail quizzes forwarded by a friend. Usually I just delete them, but this one looked intriguing. When I’d answered all those strange questions I waited breathlessly for it to came up with its considered opinion: I am going to live to 101!

So I figured that, in future, I should consider how to “spend” my time: think of it as a finite asset and be less prodigal in its administration. I should really work out how I am going “spend” the rest of my life: right now I intend to do a lot of reading, research and WRITE! Maybe I’ll even get my big book off my desk – finally!