How You Spend Your Time and Your Money Reveals A Lot About You

Time and money are your most honest currencies. You can lie with words, curate your social media personas, and tell yourselves comforting stories about who you are. If someone wanted to understand your values, priorities, and beliefs, they wouldn’t need to interview you.

They would just need two things:

• your calendar
• your bank statement

Your calendar and bank statement don’t lie. They quietly document your priorities, values, fears, and aspirations in real time.

How you spend your time and money tells a far more honest story than words ever could. These two resources—limited, valuable, and constantly in demand—reveal who you are right now, not who you hope to be or who you say you are.

Time and money are arguably life’s most valuable resources. One of the great laws of economics is that time equals money. What really matters is to spend both wisely.

Your life isn’t defined by your goals or intentions. It’s defined by your habits. And your habits are written clearly in how you spend your time and money.

About Your Time

Everyone gets the same 24 hours every single day, no more, no less. What you do with those hours shapes your identity. If your free time is consistently spent learning, creating, or resting with intention, that says something powerful about your self-respect and long-term thinking. If it’s mostly consumed by distractions, resentful obligations, or endless busyness, that also reveals something about you. Your calendar doesn't lie. It doesn’t judge you. It simply mirrors who you are.

A packed schedule can be a way to avoid discomfort, reflection, or hard decisions. When you slow down enough to examine where your time goes, you might discover what you’re running toward—or what you’re running from.

Your Time Test

Here is a test to chart how you are spending your time. The test is quite simple. Grab your date book, appointment book, calendar, and whatever you use to schedule your time.

Look at the last month to see how you spent your time. Did you waste time, or fill every block on your calendar with things that were not productive?

Spending Money Shows What You Value

Money works the same way as time. Your spending habits reveal what you believe will bring happiness, security, comfort, or status. The money you spend is a trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to your values. What you invest in repeatedly—experiences, convenience, education, status symbols, or comfort—reveals what you believe will make a better person.

This doesn’t mean spending money on fun, entertainment, or comfort is wrong. It means every dollar you spend has a message attached to it. When you look at your expenses honestly, you will see patterns. You see what you prioritize when you’re stressed, what you reward yourself with, and what you avoid investing in altogether.

You spend money. You spend time. Your spending habits reveal what you believe will bring you happiness, security, comfort, or status.

Your Money Test

Here is a simple test to chart how you are spending your money. Grab your checkbook or bank statement to take inventory of how you spend your money.

Look at the last month to see whether you have used most of it to buy worldly things that are temporal; things that will rust, bend, break, or go out of style.

The Good News: These Patterns Are Changeable

If you do not like the patterns you see, there is good news. You can change those undesirable patterns. You don’t need a dramatic overhaul. A slight redirection of spending will align with your future self. Each choice is a quiet vote for the life you want to live.

Call to Action

If this article resonated with you, take a few minutes today to change something about how you spend your time and your money.

Ask yourself:

• Do I spend money to feel loved, accepted, or seen?
• Do I save obsessively to feel in control or avoid dependence?
• Do I give generously to others but deny myself basic comforts?
• Do I believe that spending on myself is selfish?

Each of these patterns points to a belief, often unconscious, about who you are and what you’re worth. Until those beliefs are acknowledged, no amount of budgeting apps or financial advice will change your relationship with time or money.

Your calendar and your checkbook are mirrors of your habits. Let them reveal what you will always be proud of.