By 
A friend from my Melbourne consulting days messaged me last week. He’d just landed a promotion that came with a 40% salary bump and somehow felt more anxious about money than before he got it.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting in a Saigon cafe, earning a fraction of what I used to make, and I haven’t worried about money in years.
The difference is that somewhere along the way, we developed completely opposite relationships with money and time.
He optimizes for income, while I optimize for time. Ironically, the person chasing more money feels poorer than the one who walked away from it.
This is about recognizing that most of us have been sold a broken equation: That more money automatically equals more freedom, more security, and more happiness.
After leaving corporate strategy four years ago and rebuilding my financial life around different principles, I’ve noticed specific habits that separate men who feel wealthy regardless of their income from those who feel poor regardless of their salary.
These are fundamental shifts in how you think about the relationship between money, time, and what actually constitutes wealth.
1) They track time more carefully than money
Most people can tell you their salary down to the cent but have no idea how they spent last Thursday afternoon.
I flipped this completely. I track my time in blocks now—not obsessively, just aware of where it goes—and, meanwhile, I check my bank balance maybe twice a month.
This sounds backwards until you realize that time is the only truly finite resource.
You can always earn more money, and you can never earn back a single hour.
When you start tracking time like you track money, you notice the expensive trades you’ve been making unconsciously.
That high-paying job that requires 60-hour weeks? You’re selling your time at a discount, you just don’t see it because the price tag is hidden.
I keep a simple log of how I spend my days: The patterns revealed themselves quickly as the activities that felt productive often weren’t, and the “time wasters” often recharged me in ways that made everything else better.
Once you see where your time actually goes versus where you think it goes, you can’t unsee it.
You start making different choices about what deserves those hours.
2) They maintain a freedom fund before a luxury fund
Here’s the habit that changed everything for me: maintaining a six-month runway fund at all times.
The difference is psychological but profound: This money is for when something goes right, like when an opportunity appears that requires you to take a risk or when you simply need to walk away from something that’s crushing your soul.
Before I had this fund, every financial decision carried weight.
Should I take this project I don’t believe in? Can I afford to say no to this client? What if work dries up next month?
Now, those questions answer themselves. The fund is six months of not having to compromise, not having to take work that doesn’t align with my values, and not having to stay in situations that drain me.
Most people save for things—cars, houses, and vacations—while men who value time over income save for options.
The ability to choose becomes more valuable than any specific thing you could buy.
3) They invest in tools that multiply time
There’s a specific category of spending that looks like expense but functions like investment: Anything that genuinely gives you time back, such as real tools that eliminate recurring time drains from your life.
These include good running shoes that don’t leave you injured and losing weeks to recovery, a reliable laptop that doesn’t crash during important work, or living close enough to walk to what you need instead of commuting everywhere.
The calculation is simple but most people never make it: If something costs $500 but saves you two hours a week, that’s 104 hours a year, so what’s 104 hours of your life worth?
I see people agonize over a $30 monthly subscription that saves them hours while dropping $200 on clothes they’ll wear twice.
The clothes feel like an investment in image, while the subscription feels like an expense.
They’ve got it exactly backwards.
4) They choose location based on lifestyle arbitrage
One of the smartest financial moves I ever made had nothing to do with earning more money.
It was moving to a city where my desired lifestyle costs 70% less.
This is about finding where the gap between cost and quality of life is widest in your favor.
Saigon gives me a lifestyle that would cost five times as much in Melbourne because the things I value—walkable neighborhoods, good coffee, fresh food, time to write—are accessible rather than luxury.
You don’t have to move across the world to apply this principle.
Even within your own country, there are massive differences in what your money and time can buy.
The trick is being honest about what actually matters to your daily experience versus what you think should matter.
5) They practice selective ownership
Everything you own owns a piece of you back as it needs maintenance, storage, insurance, and attention.
The mental bandwidth this consumes is invisible, but real.
Men who value time over income own carefully. Every possession needs to earn its place by either saving time, enabling experiences, or genuinely improving daily life.
I learned this the hard way when I left Melbourne as selling everything forced me to confront how much I’d been maintaining versus actually using.
Now, I ask different questions before buying anything: Will this require regular attention? Will I need to think about this after I buy it? Does this create obligations or eliminate them?
6) They say no to money that comes with hidden costs
Not all money is created equal. Some comes clean—you do work, you get paid, and transaction complete—while other money comes with strings, obligations, and ongoing entanglements that cost far more than the payment justifies.
Learning to spot and reject expensive money is a superpower, such as the client who pays well but requires constant availability, the project that pays upfront but commits you to months of obligations, or the opportunity that looks lucrative until you factor in everything else it requires.
I’ve turned down work that would have doubled my monthly income because it would have eliminated my morning writing time.
That sounds insane until you realize that writing time is why I left corporate in the first place.
Taking the money would have been stealing from myself.
7) They measure wealth in autonomy, not assets
The biggest shift is the simplest: Redefining what wealth means.
Most people measure wealth in dollars, possessions, or status symbols.
Men who value time over income measure it in autonomy: How many of your daily decisions are truly yours to make?
Can you wake up without an alarm? Can you take a random Wednesday off? Can you pursue projects that interest you regardless of their earning potential? Can you say no to things that pay well but feel wrong?
These aren’t luxuries, but somewhere we got convinced that we need to sacrifice them now to maybe get them back later, after we’ve “made it.”
The deeper lesson
Here’s what four years of prioritizing time over income has taught me: Feeling wealthy has almost nothing to do with how much money you make and everything to do with how aligned your resources are with your actual values.
The friend who messaged me makes three times what I do but feels perpetually broke because every increase in income comes with a corresponding increase in obligation.
More money, less autonomy; higher salary, lower control.
Meanwhile, living below my means in a city that supports my lifestyle, maintaining a freedom fund, and being ruthlessly selective about what I let into my life has created a sense of abundance that no salary ever provided.
This is about recognizing that the real scarcity in modern life is time and autonomy.
Once you start optimizing for what’s actually scarce, you never feel poor again.