Do You Have Margin in Your Timebank?

Some people will not get what the title means because as a society we don’t think about things like this. I wish more people would realize that they are bankrupting their time and the day will come when their lives fall apart if they don’t change before that happens. Now is the time to make the changes that you need to make.

Many financial advisers will tell you that you need margin in your life financially, so that if something happens, it does not destroy your life. You are taught to live below your means and start saving for a rainy day but you are never taught the same thing when it comes to your time. We all have 86,400 seconds each day in our timebank and it’s up to us how we invest those seconds!

Instead, you are taught to work harder for the rainy days but if all you do is book your time up then the day will come when you run out of time and can no longer add anything to it. That will be the day that if a disaster happens, your life will crash.

Here is what I mean, I saw something recently that talked about a woman that lives her life in 15-minute increments. She is so booked from basically sun up to sun down that if something happens to her mom or dad, guess what, she has no time left? She will not be able to take 1-2 weeks away without destroying her life financially. She has filled her schedule up because of debt.

So what do you do? Here is where sacrifices have to take place. This is where you will have to give up some things so that you have time for more important things. This will be hard for most people. This is where you may have to sacrifice growing in your career so that you can grow as a couple in marriage.

The family is very important and without the time to give them, we as a society are cheapening our marriages and families by booking our times up all day every day.

Many people try to fit their marriage around their career when they should be fitting their career around their marriage. This is where you may have to downsize in order to upsize your life with your family!

Instead of working 60 hours a week, find a way to work 40-50 and invest that extra time in your marriage. You need some room so that you can grow in your marriage. You need some time that you can devote to your spouse and kids with zero interruptions.

Think about it this way:

Leaders study 1-2 hours a day for their career. They learn at work and do extra things in order to move up in their career.

We do the exact same thing except for our marriage. We study things that help our marriage for 1-2 hours a day. We learn new things with each other each day and we do extra things to move our marriage to the next level.

That is a huge part of what we do to grow our marriage. Without margin, we could not do some things like that. We work on it every day but we could not do that if we worked 10-12 hour days. Something has to give when you work that much. One day your marriage or health is going to crash and that will be the day you wish you had changed sooner.

Don’t wait for that to happen, find ways to change now so that you can give your spouse and kids the structure they need as a husband / wife and father / mother!

Living an Inspired Marriage,

Chris Benton

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Chris Benton

I am co-founder of Inspired Marriage. I went through 19 years of addictions until God healed me Dec 26th, 2007. The first 5 years of our marriage was hell because of my addictions. With Sandy's patience, I was able to allow God to work in me and we have been growing spiritually together ever since! Oct 5th, 2023 was 21 years of marriage and it's been an inspired one!