Buying Time
Regaining Lost Ground
by Aspen Edge
W
hen we have surplus financial resources one of the commodities we rarely consider buying is time. Yet time is an extremely precious and sought after resource. We often complain that there is simply not enough time in which to accomplish all that we wish to do. However, when the opportunity arises to purchase some of this cherished commodity, we often pass it by. It has been said that the rich manage assets, the middle class manage liabilities and the poor manage expenses. Time is an asset that can be managed by everyone. In fact, the decision whether or not to purchase time may be crucial to the success of a land-based sustainable way of life. What most of us have experienced is that when we have time we have perspective. This allows for a much more creative and response-able approach to our lives.
plant assets, with any surplus to be sold thereafter. We anticipated a return on this investment in about five years. We also wanted to generate income from our own edible plant assets, but the return on this investment would be around 10 years. This knowledge gave us the timeframe with which we would need to work.
Planning the Purchase Eight years ago, my husband and I decided we had reached the limit of our management capabilities regarding assorted gardens, allotments and a field. We longed to have all our activities centralized around our home. This desire eventually led us to purchase 20 acres (8 hectares) of maquis/garigue land at a 3,700-foot (1,300m) elevation in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in southern Spain. We used, as a financial guideline, Bill Mollison’s (of Permaculture fame) recommendation of 40 percent of our capital to purchase the property, and 60 percent to develop it. Through the sale of our house, many car boot sales and an inheritance, we purchased La Chaparra three years later. We also did a considerable amount of costing and planning. We had a very clear idea about what we were trying to achieve, and worked out how long we thought it would take to achieve it. We looked at our various “enterprises” in terms of short, medium and long-term returns. For example, there was a workshop attached to the farmhouse, which we renovated and let in the first year. This provided us with a good short-term return. In our second year we developed the perennial nursery, in which we raised edible, medicinal, and forage plants from seed. We did this to increase our own
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IN PRACTICE
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Aspen and David Edge, with son Samuel, have learned how to “buy” more time with Holistic Management.
Buying Time With this information we bought ourselves 10 years of time. This meant that we allocated funds for the purchase and the development of the land as well as the living costs for the time it would take for us to be self-sufficient. We would be able to hone our perspective, have time to develop responses to changing circumstances, and relieve ourselves of the stress of having to generate instant income. One of the challenges of moving to another culture is that different conventions operate, which may have financial implications. One such example is that in Spain builders will not give a price for the completion of a project. They charge only by the hour, which means that there is no way of forecasting the final cost or completion time. We also continued to purchase from whole and organic sources, but due to the lack of local demand, the cost of our food bill increased threefold. These aspects eroded three years of our “bought time.”
M a rc h / A p r i l 2 0 0 4
In 1997 we were introduced to the work of Allan Savory through The Savory Center’s video Creating A Sustainable Civilization. We have gradually learned more and more about Holistic Management, and two years ago began the complete incorporation of this framework into our work at La Chaparra. We liked The Savory Center’s motto of providing the link between a healthy environment and a sound economy. It is with reference to the latter that we saw that there might be a way in which we could recoup the time that we had lost. We had originally accepted the change in financial circumstances, but now decided we could still do something to regain the lost ground. We re-organized our priorities to bring forward some of our enterprises so they would contribute sooner to income generation. We made a commitment to maintaining a constant level of expenditure, which we achieved over the fouryear period of our lives here. Once we began using Holistic Management® financial planning, we found that we were in even greater control of our finances. We were able to further cut expenses and more rigorously test our spending decisions. Even when faced with unexpected expenses, representing 35 percent of our total annual budget, we still had a wealth of choices before us and a continued expectation of regaining lost ground. Financial planning to us exemplifies the adage “forewarned is forearmed.” The more money we save, the longer it will last and the more time we can buy to help us meet our goal. Currently, 47 percent of our expenditure is wealth generating, or asset-building, and we want to maintain or even increase this ratio. We have never regretted our investment in the time we have bought for ourselves. Buying time has enabled us to maintain perspective. This has enabled us to anticipate some of the greater challenges ahead and plan for the most creative solutions. The more time we can buy for ourselves, the more we can realize the potential of the property. The more potential we can realize, the greater our success at leading a land-based, sustainable way of life. Aspen Edge lives with her husband, David, and son, Samuel, at Cortijo Nogales in Granada, Spain. They offer self-catering holidays, internships and workshops and can be reached at (00 34) 958 347 053 or mlima_ngong@hotmail.com.