Time is Money: Benjamin Franklin and the Philosophy That Built America
The Origin of Time is Money
Benjamin Franklin coined the aphorism “time is money” in 1748 in a short essay titled “Advice to a Young Tradesman.” He wrote this counsel for a merchant’s apprentice seeking to understand the principles of commercial success. Most people assume the phrase emerged from the industrial revolution or even earlier classical philosophy. Popular belief suggests it appeared in Franklin’s most famous work, Poor Richard’s Almanack, but it did not, though the almanac certainly promoted similar sentiments throughout its publication from 1732 to 1758. Franklin’s essay was brief and practical. It embodied his characteristic blend of philosophical wisdom and material pragmatism. He wasn’t writing for scholars or theologians, but rather for young men trying to make their way in the colonial American economy. The quote’s enduring power becomes all the more remarkable when you consider his audience.
To fully understand Franklin’s philosophy, you must appreciate the revolutionary nature of his life and thinking. Born in Boston in 1706 as the fifteenth of seventeen children to a soap and candle maker, Franklin received minimal formal education. At age twelve, his family apprenticed him to his brother as a printer. Rather than accept a subordinate role, the ambitious young Franklin ran away to Philadelphia at seventeen with just a few coins in his pocket. This act of self-invention set the pattern for his entire life. He believed that through industriousness, frugality, and self-improvement, any person could rise above their circumstances. By his early twenties, Franklin had established his own printing business. By his forties, he had become one of the most successful printers in North America. This success allowed him to retire from active business and pursue intellectual and civic interests.
What Time is Money Really Means
Many people fail to recognize that Franklin’s famous aphorism emerged from a man who had the luxury of stepping away from commercial life. His real genius lay not in accumulating wealth for its own sake. Instead, he understood that time was the ultimate finite resource that enabled all other pursuits. Once he had made his fortune through printing, he devoted himself to scientific experiments, civic innovation, writing, diplomacy, and political philosophy. He invented the lightning rod, the bifocal lens, and the glass harmonica.
He established America’s first lending library, first volunteer fire department, and first academy that would eventually become the University of Pennsylvania. In 1752, he conducted his famous kite experiment, risking his life to advance scientific understanding. Franklin embodied a more nuanced philosophy than simple money-chasing. He understood that by managing time efficiently in the money-making phase of life, one could purchase the freedom to pursue higher intellectual and civic goals.
The context of “time is money” in the 1748 essay is particularly instructive. Franklin wasn’t simply equating temporal and economic value in a reductive way. Rather, he was explaining to a young tradesman that every moment spent idly or inefficiently represents a concrete loss of earning potential and capital. Franklin presented vivid examples. If a tradesman neglects his business to sit idle, he loses not only the work he might have performed but also the profit he might have earned. The principle extended to borrowing money. If you borrow at six percent interest, you owe for the use of that money every single day until repayment. Punctuality and efficiency became matters of financial survival. For Franklin, writing during a period of colonial commerce where profit margins were often thin and competition fierce, this principle wasn’t callous materialism. Instead, it was practical wisdom for those seeking economic independence.
How Time is Money Changed Business
The cultural impact of “time is money” cannot be overstated, though people have interpreted and misinterpreted it countless ways since Franklin’s day. The phrase became a cornerstone of the “Protestant work ethic” that Max Weber would later identify as fundamental to capitalist development in his 1905 work “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the aphorism had been absorbed into industrial culture. It justified the rigorous time-discipline of factory work and office employment. Frederick Winslow Taylor’s scientific management movement of the early 1900s explicitly drew on this principle. His approach broke work down into timed segments to eliminate “wasted” motion.
Self-help gurus, business school professors, productivity consultants, and time-management experts have invoked the phrase often. They frequently strip away the philosophical context Franklin provided. In popular usage, it has come to represent the supremacy of economic calculation over all other values—a distortion that probably would have troubled Franklin. He saw commerce as a means to higher ends rather than life’s ultimate purpose.
Interestingly, Franklin’s own papers and correspondence reveal a man far more complex and leisurely than the “time is money” maxim might suggest. He was a celebrated conversationalist who spent considerable time in salons and coffee houses discussing politics, philosophy, and science. He maintained an extensive correspondence with leading intellectuals of his age, including David Hume and Voltaire. He enjoyed good wine, good company, and intellectual debate—not exactly the profile of someone obsessed with maximizing every minute. His famous autobiography, which he began writing in his seventies, is filled with digressions and reflections that have nothing to do with commercial productivity. This contradiction between Franklin’s famous aphorism and his actual life points to something important. The saying was advice for a particular stage of life and a particular purpose—establishing economic security and independence.