A recurring theme in Christopher Nolan’s movies is the manipulation of time.

“Interstellar” explores strange, heartbreaking effects of relativity. “Dunkirk” tells the same war story through three different timelines. “The Odyssey” opens near the epic’s end — before a series of interwoven flashbacks show Odysseus’ arduous 10-year journey home.

It always takes me post-movie research to understand what really happened. Perhaps another reason why Nolan’s movies are so popular — you end up studying the lore behind the movie, and want to watch it again.

The effects of time have also fascinated me in personal finance. All of us have the same 12 months a year, yet how we factor it in our lives is personal. Time dilation is real. We make decisions differently when considering things through different lenses of time.

The simplest example: what you want to do with money at 45 is different from what you want at 25. But at 25, it’s easy to assume your desires will stay the same. Might be a mistake to lock yourself into 20 years of debt for a flashy bachelor pad.

What are some other non-obvious ways time affects our money decisions?

Compounding Is Hard to Fathom so It’s Ignored

You probably know the Rule of 72 well. At 7% returns, it takes ~10 years to double a lump sum investment. By doing nothing.

Where things really blow my mind though is if you continue making contributions. What happens if you invest X sum of money, and continue investing 10% of X every year (fixed, doesn’t increase)?

Instead of taking 10 years, you get to “double” in 5 years.

And after 23 years, you’d have 10x your starting investment:

• Start with $10,000 and contribute $1K yearly. Your total investment is $33K, but your final sum is $100,000.
• Start with $100,000 and contribute $10K yearly. Your total investment is $330K, but you end up with a million bucks.

Compounding is magical.

However, the human mind is not built to understand exponential calculations. At the start of your investment journey, returns will look small, and you might feel hopeless. I know — I remember looking at my retirement account at the start of my career and feeling pathetic. 20 years on, I marvel at how that number grew, and am grateful (one foolish withdrawal aside) I never interrupted that compounding process.

Don’t slip into financial nihilism. Don’t give up or think your goals are impossible to reach.

The math proves it. As long as you’re able to be patient, time is on your side.

Youth Is Wasted by the Young

“$100 at 25 is worth $500 at 65 — even after we adjust for inflation.”

How can that be? It comes down to “Janet’s Law” — how you experience time speeds up as you grow older. I’m in my early 40s now. My 30s really felt much faster than my 20s. Time dilation.

Nick Maggiulli’s brilliant article explains this, and helpfully quantifies the numbers. Theoretically, the money and experiences you have are worth more when you’re younger, less when you’re older.

Even if we don’t dive into the numbers, we know this is directionally true. You wish for spending power when you’re young. You want to climb the Stairs of Santorini when you still look reasonably hot in pictures. Not travel Europe in a wheelchair.

This may feel like it contradicts my first point about investing, but it doesn’t. Money when you’re younger is precisely more powerful because it has time to compound:

• If you invest it well, it grows into life-changing sums of money
• If you spend it well, the skills, memories and relationships you build grow into a wonderfully-lived life

Do both.

Time Is Exchanged for Money, but Not Money for Time

For most of us who didn’t grow up rich, life can turn out like this:

When you’re young, you have a lot of time but little money. When you’re older, you have more money but realize you’re running out of time.

The classic book “Your Money or Your Life” popularized considering how much time you’re exchanging for money. Before buying something big, it asked you to consider how much time you had to work (“life energy”) to pay for it.

I like to consider the reverse angle: knowing how your time, your life energy, is limited — have you considered using money to buy back some of it?

In practice this can look like:

• Paying for a personal trainer and supplements to prolong your healthspan
• Getting domestic cleaners to help with chores
• Buying the “priority lane” at the airport

Yes, some of these make less sense if you’re struggling with money. And again, if you didn’t grow up rich, paying money to solve things you used to manage yourself might seem arrogant. You don’t want people whispering behind your back, “Money’s changed him.”

But when you reach a certain level of financial security, it’s reasonable to ask: “Do I really want to spend my valuable time on this, or should I pay to save time for something more meaningful?”

Time is irreversible. You can always make more money. You will never have more time than you have today.

Worrying Too Much About Today; Forgetting Long-Term History

The S&P 500 has hit all-time highs 27 times this year¹. People are worried: “Is this an AI bubble?” Even legend Michael Burry has been making bearish calls — mostly wrong so far — for over a decade now.

Strip out the emotions of the moment, and consider the history of the US stock market. If historical trend continues:

• A crash will eventually come
• The market will recover and reach all-time highs again

For an individual investor, you can take heart that the long-term trend supports you.

In Ben Carlson’s new book “Risk & Reward,” he tells a remarkable story about Bob — the world’s worst market timer — using historical stock market data starting from the 1970s. Over 40+ years, Bob regularly saves money into a bank account, and only invests into the S&P 500 at five terrible times: right before five major crashes².

Even though he was the world’s worst market timer, Bob eventually retires in 2024 with almost $1.1 million — which grew from ~$200,000. The long-term trend saved him.

Understanding long-term history helps you remain calm in troubling circumstances. (Another way to take advantage: have teammates on your side who study history. For me, this is working with financial advisors who’re wiser than me.)

This applies to things beyond personal finance. For example, broadening your time horizon when thinking about work problems.

10 years from now, will your terrible day at work today mean anything? Some things are critical; worth stressing about. Most are not.

You’ve made it through stormy times before. You’ll make it again.

You Don’t Become the Future Self You Planned For

20 years into retirement, a third of American retirees are wealthier³ than when they retired.

For someone who’s personally stressed about saving enough for retirement — I found that stat amazing.

Imagine this: You’ve spent decades diligently saving and investing. You now have enough to stop working, forever. Enough to ride out even violent market crashes and uncertainties. Yet even as the clock ticks away your twilight years, you never start spending down your money.

I can only speculate on the reasons, but my guess is it’s inertia.

You built a possible future for yourself but you’re still living in the past. The behaviors that built your nest egg end up holding you back from fully enjoying it.

For a lifemaxxer, Bronnie Ware’s⁴ “Top Five Regrets of the Dying” are canon now:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

None of those have anything to do with “I wish I had more money saved in the bank.”

On the other hand, some of those regrets can definitely be mitigated by spending money better.

It’s later than you think. Is it time to save more money for your future self, or use that money to be the best version of yourself today?

– – –

In one of “Interstellar’s” pivotal scenes, main character Cooper loses 23 years due to a miscalculation near the black hole Gargantua — where 1 hour equals 7 years back on earth. By the time he reunites with his daughter, she’s on her deathbed, while he’s still a young man.

None of us will ever face such extreme stakes, but as we’ve seen, the effects of time can confuse even the wisest money managers.

Understanding the effects of time on our financial decisions won’t make us perfect — but it’s one step forward to getting better at it.

Footnotes:

1. As of Sept. 9, 2026
2. Market crashes included: October 1987 (-33.5%), March 2000 (-49.1%), October 2007 (-56.8%), February 2020 (-33.9%), January 2022 (-25.4%)
3. Or as wealthy as when they retired. Source Data: Employee Benefit Research Institute
4. Bronnie Ware spent several years caring for dying people in their homes. Her full-length memoir, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, shares further wisdom from dying people and how Bronnie’s own life was transformed through this learning. It is available in 32 languages.

Pic from Pexels: Frank Cone