I have a friend who earns more than $750,000 per year. He loves what he does, but if you ask how he’s doing, his #1 complaint would be how busy he is.

So imagine my surprise when I visited him and noticed grocery bags sitting on his counter. I pointed to the bags and asked: “What’s that?”

“I just got back from the grocery store,” he replied.

I paused. “Have you ever thought about having someone do your grocery shopping?”

He looked at me like I was a nut. PAY to have someone do his grocery shopping? What kind of elitist would do that?

Here’s a $750,000-earning adult behaving like he still earns $50,000. Why?

In other areas of life, we change as we grow: our clothing style, where we live, where we eat. Yet in the area of how we use money and time — especially for high-earners and wealthy individuals — why do we tend to be so resistant to change?

The hidden paradox of money versus time

Are you familiar with the concept of buying back your time?

It’s one of the most powerful productivity concepts I’ve learned as a business owner.

Think about it: When you start your business or career, you have more time than money.

But as your earnings grow, that reverses — and you’ll soon have more money than time.

Most people in the world will never face this problem. It’s likely that growing up, your parents and family never encountered having more money than time, which changes the calculus of how decisions are made in a way that few can understand.

As a result, most high-earners are unequipped to recognize this and then change their approach to work and their personal life.

To paraphrase author Brian Tracy, “As I got more successful, I couldn’t afford to do some of the things I used to…like mow my lawn.”

This is but one huge paradox of earning more money and becoming wealthy: Many people claim they value time over money, but if you look at their calendars, the uncomfortable truth is that you’ll find the opposite is true.

For example, I remember being 15 years old and poring over PC magazines for hours and hours to learn how to build the best computer with the best processor and video card that would let me play Duke Nukem at maximum settings.

Now? I just buy a Mac and am completely happy with it.

I remember I used to scoff at people flying first-class. I just thought, “LOL, stupid people….we’re all getting to the same destination!”

I just didn’t consider who — and why — someone might spend what seems like an insane amount of money on something (like a personal trainer, your wedding, travel, food delivery) that some people would view as wasteful.

More often than not, these high-earners are not stupid. They understood value in a different way than I used to. (If you want to read more on this point, check out this post: Money Dials: Why you spend the way you do).

If you earn $40,000 per year, spending $5,000 on a first-class flight would be crazy.

If you earn $450,000 as a CEO, it makes perfect sense because in business, misaligned beliefs on time and money can cost you dearly — while getting aligned can become a force multiplier.

Is buying back your time just “showing off”?

The concept of “buying back time” often rubs some people the wrong way, as if buying your time means you’re acting arrogant. But guess what? We all already do it! Here are a few examples:

• Eating at a restaurant (instead of cooking)
• Getting your car’s oil changed (instead of doing it yourself)
• Taking an Uber (instead of walking or taking public transit)
• Paying full retail price for an item rather than spending hours hunting for deals on the internet

I’d bet you do some of these every week and don’t view it as “buying back your time.” The calculation probably happens at a very subconscious level, and we don’t view any of these as being crazy extravagant.

Yes, you could do a lot of things yourself. But you don’t have to.

It can be a matter of convenience so you can focus on getting results and move on to the more important things in your life. For example, I’m into fitness. I could theoretically read a ton of material on bodybuilding, structure my diet, and follow through myself, saving tons of money.

However, I know I’ll never be as efficient as my trainer, who lives and breathes fitness. By paying him, I can trade money for time and get the best outcome — efficient training, great results, like so:

Again, I could do this myself…but I don’t have to. I’d rather spend that time on my business and with family.

I still find it difficult to know when it’s “right” to spend money or time on something.

Maybe it’s our puritanical views on doing everything ourselves. Maybe it’s an unfamiliarity with putting these principles into practice because, by definition, buying back your time is for people who have more money than time.

Think about how lots of wealthy and successful people, like my friend earning $750,000, who are uncomfortable with the idea of delegating to other people. It’s the old “too big for my britches” concept — it strikes some people as showing off.

But if you’re working hard, you should be able to buy back your time. You should always ask: What do I get?

What do you get if you had three hours of your time back every week? Do you get to fly your parents out to visit you and you put them up in an amazing suite? (If you are Indian, the answer is no: They will be staying with you.) Do you get to do the things you really enjoy, like cooking your own meal or composing music?

If you’re working hard and earning more money than ever, you should always ask: What do I get?

Then you should make it a point to use that money to improve your version of a Rich Life (here’s a post on How I spent over $50,000 on luxury services to live my own Rich Life).

This doesn’t mean you have to immediately start spending tons of money to buy back your time. What if you started with just one hour per week?

Aiming to save one hour per week, a concept I learned from marketer Eben Pagan, is an easy introduction to the concept of buying back your time.

I recommend starting with areas in your personal life that you hate — usually this is laundry, grocery shopping, or even managing your finances — where there are great solutions available to outsource or systematize the work. Then as you get more advanced, you can tackle trickier topics like scheduling, email management, and entire project management.

If you want to automate your personal finances and reclaim time spent (and wasted) on ineffective budgeting, I teach my step-by-step system in my NYT best-selling book. You can download the entire first chapter here, free.