An Inadvertent Deal at Ollie's
By Jim Bauer
@porwest (109171)
United States
October 11, 2025 7:07pm CST
Saving money is something I do quite on purpose. What's a dollar worth? Well, I always think of money in terms of an average wage. Let's say it's $15 an hour. That means $1 is worth 4 minutes.
I always ask myself, if I am willing to spend $1 more, that I know I could save, am I also willing to work 4 minutes more to pay for it?
The answer is usually no.
But sometimes savings happen by accident. And I like when that happens. If I am already vigilant to save AND accidentally save more? It exponentially decreases the time I have to spend working to pay for something.
It's win-win. Because I think of money in terms of time. Not dollars and cents.
A while back I saw that Ollie's, which is a liquidation store, had 5 pound 9 ounce containers of Lipton Iced Tea mix for $5.99. It makes 38 quarts. That's a steal, by the way. My wife likes it, and so I got some.
They're still carrying it for now and I went today to get some more to "stock up," and when I looked at my receipt, I realized they only charged me $2.99.
Someone put the wrong sticker on it. So, I got 5 pounds 9 ounces of Lipton Iced Tea mix for 12 minutes less.
5 cents is worth 12 seconds. Do you consider time when you consider added expense? Do you work to save money, or do you work to work longer to spend more?
Let me put it this way. I retired at 50. How did I do that? Besides investing all my savings and essentially being paid more for every minute I worked, I did it by reducing the time I had to work to pay for things, and by reducing the amount I paid for things I thought I was saving time by not saving on.
I never once said, "It's only 5 cents." I said, "That's 12 seconds of my life on the time clock."
Because again, I always thought of money in terms of time. Not dollars and cents.
Confusing? Yes. 100%. But if you really digest what I am talking about here, it will make complete sense. We work to pay for things and that costs us time working. If we reduce our costs, we reduce the time we have to work to pay for it.
Dizzy yet? So am I. lol. But does this make any sense to you at all?
The iced tea was already a savings of $3 if I bought it somewhere else. So, I immediately saved 12 minutes buying it cheaper at Ollie's. Getting it cheaper than that, even if by accident, means I saved 24 minutes at work.
Time is money, and money is time. And if you start thinking of it in those terms, suddenly it's no longer about money. It's about time. How much does a $60 pair of shoes cost me? 4 hours.
9 people like this
10 responses
@noni1959 (10694)
• United States
12 Oct
My son gets after me spending so much time on surveys and interviews to make extra but for me, it helps a lot even though it can take quite awhile to get to a good amount. If you look at it, a lot of time is here trying to make some extra and that is a lot of minutes of our time.
6 people like this
@GardenGerty (166027)
• United States
12 Oct
My surveys and such pay for little luxuries I would have to put off otherwise.
6 people like this
@porwest (109171)
• United States
12 Oct
As I always say, every penny matters. You will find me elated if I find a penny on the ground and super elated if I go to Aldi and find an abandoned shopping cart. lol. Even the time I spend here could be considered a waste of time, but it adds pennies to my bottom line, and I want every single one I can muster.
1 person likes this
@porwest (109171)
• United States
12 Oct
@GardenGerty I should probably go back to them. They do earn well. I just find them so tedious it's hard for me to stick to them.
@marguicha (228778)
• Chile
12 Oct
For me savings and time go together but I also add if I think it is worth it to spend or save part of my life in something. For instance, I spend a lot of time here because I don´t measure it in money. But I do think about it when I´m doing something that I consider boring. Is it worth it spending my life in that?
5 people like this
@marguicha (228778)
• Chile
12 Oct
@porwest I agree with you. I don´t spend much in clothes because I don´t care to be up to date and I take care of them. But I like to spend on little luxuries to eat and when I was younger I loved to go to vacations.
@porwest (109171)
• United States
12 Oct
The way I view spending and saving is going back to something else I always talk about. Save on the things you need so you can afford to spend on the things you want. Every penny you waste is one penny less to do something you want or buy something you want.
Waste 5 cents paying more for a pork chop, and you'll have 5 cents less to go to Cancun.
That includes retirement. If you want to retire on X date and spend the means to do that without thinking about it...
You won't get to retire when you want to.
1 person likes this
@GardenGerty (166027)
• United States
12 Oct
I do similar with the idea of commuting to a job. If I can make a certain wage per hour, and drive only twelve minutes each direction if I take a job an hour away at that same hourly wage I am losing money.
4 people like this
@porwest (109171)
• United States
12 Oct
You definitely have to weigh travel time and cost. My wife was once offered an opportunity to transfer to the pharmacy clinic for her company an hour and a half away. She was a floater, but she got paid mileage when she would go to a facility away from her "home base". This would have forced her to put 50,000 miles a year on her car without any extra pay and no mileage reimbursements. Between gas, tires and time...
It just didn't make sense. I told her to say no and she did.
@porwest (109171)
• United States
12 Oct
The point is, I figured it out, and I am sharing it, for free, with everyone here. What is curious to me is that, someone lays the information out, and still...
People ignore it.
And THEN complain, still, when things don't work out for them. And then they blame the system. They blame the rich.
If one wants to know how to build wealth, save money, work less, and have a better retirement, it's all right here. In my many posts. In this post.
And...people still shrug their shoulders, say "Great for you," and ignore every single lesson offered.
It boggles my mind. lol
When I say, "People are not poor because they have to be. They are poor because they want to be." Your comment proves that 100%. It's a choice.
You don't want to listen to the how.
3 people like this
@GardenGerty (166027)
• United States
12 Oct
@porwest All of my shopping is an adventure, bouncing around all the clearance sections first. It saves a few minutes of my working life every time I get bakery goods 50% off. I would snap up a deal like your iced tea in a heart beat.
3 people like this
@Fleura (32849)
• United Kingdom
12 Oct
@porwest What I think is really odd is when people say 'I would never take financial advice from a rich person, only from a poor person like me'.
I understand what they are thinking, in that someone who has always been rich couldn't really understand their circumstances, but when someone who started poor has turned their financial situation around, they are exactly the sort of person whose advice would be invaluable!
1 person likes this
@LadyDuck (484869)
• Italy
12 Oct
Correct, time is money and time is our most precious asset, every second gone will never come back again. When I check the special offers I also check how far the store that offers something a few cents less is far. Often the cost of gas is more than what you save.
3 people like this
We do not have unlimited years to live, I agree.@porwest (109171)
• United States
13 Oct
It's the same way I think of investing. It's income replacement. The more you keep, the less you need to earn working, and the less you need to earn working, the less time you have to SPEND working. So, really what the aim is, is to buy freedom. And that means...
More time doing what you want rather than time spent doing what you are forced to.
1 person likes this
@moffittjc (125932)
• Gainesville, Florida
12 Oct
I've never broken it down in terms of minutes or seconds, but I do break it down in terms of hours of work. Whenever I am parting with my money, I will calculate how many hours of work it took to equal what I am shelling out. It really does help you put another level of perspective on your money!
4 people like this
@porwest (109171)
• United States
12 Oct
I break things down in terms of time the exact same way I break down things with regard to dollars and cents. Money in seconds and pennies. When you are hyper focused on the small things, you are almost automatically double hyper focused on the big ones.
To me it's like baby steps. Mind the pennies and the dollars will follow. Lose sight of the pennies and the dollars will be harder to chase. And just like pennies add up, so does time. 10 seconds here, 4 seconds there, 40 seconds there, and before you know it you've got cumulative hours spent doing something just to earn pennies that are wasted. If a nickel is worth 12 seconds of my life, having to be at work to earn it, it makes me think differently about that nickel. If I waste a nickel a day for 40 years of my life, that's 49 hours added to my work life. Granted, that may not seem like a lot, but what it helps me to realize is that if I am not minding even that nickel more, it's VERY likely I am doing it way more than once a day, and I'm probably wasting way more than a nickel a day.
Why do people work until they are 67, or sometimes longer? Because they can't afford to stop working...or at least that's most often the case. What's worse is when someone does retire and doesn't have anything to really show for all the years they worked.
They retire to a deeper financial struggle and can't afford to do all the things they wished they could do. To me, life's just too short to miss out on things when we have all the opportunity not to have to.
@Traceyjayne (5762)
• United Kingdom
12 Oct
I love a bargain ….i got free salad bag today …not a major freebies but a freebie ….it would have cost £1.08…..not sure how many minutes etc …..
1 person likes this
@lovebuglena (47920)
• Staten Island, New York
12 Oct
I never thought of money in terms of time. But I do love, saving money, of course. I always make sure that there were no mistakes at the register. If something is wrong, I let the cashier know. Or if I find a mistake after I’ve already paid I go back to the cashier or to customer service if there is one to rectify the mistake. If I see a mistake during checkout, but it’s in my favor I usually don’t say anything. There were some instances where I did let the cashier know that they scanned an item as a wrong item—it was produce—but they had told me that how they scanned it it’s cheaper for me and decided not to correct their mistake. Better for me.
@LindaOHio (203168)
• United States
12 Oct
I never thought of it that way; but whatever works for you. As you know, I pay for dinners out and luxuries through surveys, etc.
1 person likes this
@porwest (109171)
• United States
13 Oct
Time is money, and money is time. The question I ask is, how long do I have to work to pay for X. If I go to the grocery store and spend $100 on groceries, using the $15 an hour example, I'd have to work 6 hours and 40 minutes. So, using that as a guide, I can ask myself, for each item I buy, if I can save 5 cents on this one, that shaves off 12 seconds, and oh, here's a 10 cent savings, that's 24 seconds.
As for how I have always paid for dinners and luxuries, I use proceeds from investments and investment strategies. For example, I want to take this here trip and it will cost me $1500 all in for hotels, eating, gas etcetera. I scan my portfolio and peruse options contracts, and then find one I can sell as a covered call options contract and collect a $1500 premium for the contracts.
That saves me time as well from working because I can generate income without working for it from money I already earned.
Earn the money once and let it earn for you for a lifetime.
1 person likes this
@LindaOHio (203168)
• United States
11h
@porwest It says a lot that you were able to retire so young.
