How Do You Buy Time?
Financial Freedom in an Irrational World — a book about using money to buy time, optionality and freedom while avoiding the behavioral traps that work against us.
“How Do You Buy Time?” is a forthcoming book by Dr. Tiran Rothman about financial freedom through the lens of behavioral economics. Its central idea is simple: money can buy time, but people often use time to buy more money and then use money in ways that do not increase freedom.
The central question
Most personal-finance advice begins with products: budgets, pensions, stocks, real estate or tax structures. This book begins one step earlier. What is money for? If the answer includes autonomy, optionality and the ability to decide how to use one’s time, then financial decisions should be evaluated partly by the amount of freedom they create.
Why behavior matters
People do not experience wealth as a spreadsheet. Consumption adapts, social comparison changes reference points, short-term rewards compete with distant goals and market volatility can overturn a carefully designed plan. A financial system therefore has to work with human behavior rather than assume it away.
Money as stored choice
Savings and invested capital can be understood as stored future choices. They may allow someone to leave a job, take a sabbatical, start a business, care for family or simply reduce dependence on the next paycheck. That perspective changes the meaning of financial freedom: the objective is not necessarily to stop working, but to increase the range of choices that are economically available.
From survival instincts to modern markets
Human decision mechanisms evolved in environments very different from modern financial systems. Scarcity, status, social proof and immediate rewards still shape behavior, while compound interest, retirement horizons and diversified portfolios operate over decades. The mismatch helps explain why knowing the correct financial formula is often not enough.
A practical operating system
The book aims to translate behavioral insights into rules for consumption, saving, investing and major life decisions. The goal is not perfect rationality. It is to build a system in which good decisions become easier and recurring behavioral mistakes become harder.
The Hebrew title is איך קונים זמן? with the subtitle חופש כלכלי בעולם לא רציונלי. Publication is planned for 2027.