Time Is Your Ultimate Currency
The girls and I have some of our best conversations on hikes.
A couple of days ago, as Audrey and I walked side by side on a trail around Trout Lake, we started talking about how we discovered this hike. She had noticed we upped the level of ground we were covering in Yellowstone National Park compared to previous parks we’ve visited.
I shared that we found a woman who used to be a park ranger who now creates itineraries for families visiting National Parks. We decided to give it a try for the 4-day itinerary on Yellowstone.
Audrey asked, “How much did it cost?”
I told her.
Her eyes went wide.
“You paid $60 for that?!”
I smiled. “Yes. And it was worth every penny. It was more than just a cost, it was an investment.”
I explained why:
In the past, we’ve done it three different ways:
DIY Research - Hours of planning, reading blogs, combing maps. High effort. High amount of time spent. Great experience…that cost me a lot of time.
Ask a park ranger on arrival - Low effort, low time cost. An okay experience and very dependent on when the station opened and which ranger we got.
AI tools like ChatGPT - Medium effort, medium time spent. A good experience, yet still requires validating and refining.
This time, we invested $60.
In exchange, we really liked her planning and had four full, extraordinary days exploring Yellowstone, no wasted time figuring it out, just pure presence and more experiences than we would have pieced together on our own.
FREEDOM UNLEASHED TAKEAWAY
Money comes and goes.
Time does not.
Time is the ultimate currency.
When you invest in something (or someone) that collapses space and time, whether it’s in travel, learning, or business…you save more than hours.
You gain Insights. Time. Experience.
And time after time, those investments keep paying dividends long after the money is forgotten.
…Because the greatest wealth is what you do with your time.
Where in your life is it time to stop “spending” and start investing in what matters most?
