Andy Hill is the much-loved creator of the Marriage Kids and Money platform. With over 10 million podcast downloads, YouTube views and blog visits, he knows how to create content that resonates.
His latest venture is the book Own Your Time. It’s a wholesome money book written for partnered parents who want to have more say over their time than a traditional, corporate career would allow. In its pages, you’ll not only learn about 401(k)s and solopreneurship — you’ll also learn about ways to strengthen your marriage and spend more time with your kids.
Have you ever read a financial book and just gotten bogged down with the math and technical jargon?
Own Your Time is the opposite of that.
It teaches you intermediate-to-advanced strategies to build wealth without making you want to pull your hair out. While it’s an easy read, it’s also highly educational.
Another thing that makes the book unique is its focus. The protagonist of the book is your time, and money is just a supporting character. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a character giving a lot of support. But the goal isn’t Scrooge McDuck money. The goal is having the time to live a life you actually enjoy with the people you love.
Andy talks about his high-faluting career in marketing prior to starting Marriage Kids and Money. While it paid well, it also left him without the time he wanted for his wife, children and health.
And at the end of the day?
Our relationships and health are the things that matter most in this life. His dissatisfaction with the way he was living — despite all the trappings of “success” as defined by post-industrial capitalism — was the impetus for him to remodel his own life to take back his time.
His path wasn’t always smooth, but he uses that experience to help you iron out the bumps in your own road as you reach towards more time freedom.
This shift in focus is liberating. Instead of having financial freedom as a goal, money is used as a tool to highlight the real end game: having more time with the people you love.
FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early) traditionally has people overworking in order to overearn in the early years of their career, allowing them to invest the surplus and exit the workforce at a super early age. This really hits the spot for some high-earning people and allows them to pull off an incredible feat.
But Andy found himself in quite the Catch-22. If his goal was to free up more time for his family, was overworking in pursuit of that goal really worth it, especially with young children at home?
Ultimately, he decided no. Instead, he used a slightly different strategy called Coast FIRE, which doesn’t lead to as much burnout. But it does provide adequate financial gains if your goal is to own more of your own time over the long-term. I don’t want to spoil the whole book, so if you want to learn how he did it, you’ll have to pick up a copy.
I know I already exhausted this point in the first takeaway, but it really is central to the book. While a lot of financial books focus on individualistic pursuits, Andy truly centres family life.
He doesn’t just talk about your career — he talks about building healthy spousal relationships. He discusses the realities of different parenting strategies when it comes to teaching your kids financial literacy, and how your “best” strategies may evolve over time. He also encourages readers to build whole identities that exist in their larger communities, leading to even better social health.
Andy’s vulnerability, humility and subject matter expertise shine throughout, making it a book that’s both educational and not a beast to read.
I’ve been writing about personal finance for 15 years. It’s hard to find a strategy I haven’t heard of before. Yet Andy managed to surprise me.
For example, if you’re like me, you’ve probably heard of the debt snowball and debt avalanche methods for paying off debt. But have you ever heard of the debt hatred method?
Yeah, me neither.
With the debt hatred method, Andy says, you list out your debts in order of the ones that inspire the most visceral negative emotions first, all the way down to ones that feel more emotionally neutral. Then you start by knocking out those most-hated debts, inspiring you towards action.
It’s not as financially advantageous as the debt avalanche method. But we are not human calculators. If you’ve been struggling to stick to a debt payoff plan, this emotionally motivating method might work for you.
I also learned a little bit about novel (to me) mortgage payoff strategies. If Own Your Time provided new information to a veteran finance writer, newbies to intermediate personal finance strategies will be exposed to a wealth of new knowledge.
Honestly, I have no notes for Andy. He doesn’t endorse the economic systems that are in place. While he doesn’t go so far as to call for those systems to be torn down, he does provide his audience with a viable escape hatch for their individual families. For American audiences, a lot of his thinking about these topics will be familiar, making it an easily digestible read.
While Andy doesn’t pretend to cater to all audiences, he does offer affirming acknowledgements throughout the book. For example, some people might not be able to follow his strategies because they don’t have enough income. His audience is relatively privileged, and he doesn’t gloss over that fact.
There are also other points of intersectionality, like acknowledging some systemic barriers women face and different approaches that might be required for parents of children with supplemental needs. (Though if you find yourself in this latter category, you probably need additional financial advice outside the scope of this book. Even still, it was really cool to see Andy acknowledge this audience a few times throughout.)
I would, however, encourage readers to go into the book with their eyes wide open about the target audience. If you’re a parent in a committed partnership where you share financial and life goals, you’re in the target audience. If you’re making more than $100,000 per year as a household — whether on a dual or single income — you’re in the target audience. This book is most useful to Americans, as it deals specifically with U.S. financial systems and tools.
If you don’t fall into these categories, the book is still an interesting read. You, like me, may learn some things. That said, it’s not likely to holistically apply to your unique financial situation.
Wholeheartedly. This is a book that teaches you how to make extreme(ly good) changes to your lifestyle without grinding yourself to the bone. Andy’s vulnerability, humility and subject matter expertise shine throughout, making it a book that’s both educational and not a beast to read. If you’re a parent and partner trying to find a way to build more financial (and time) freedom into your life, this book is a must-read.
Book cover used in banner image from Book Hero.
Brynne Conroy is an award-winning personal finance writer, creator of the popular women’s finance site, Femme Frugality, and author of The Feminist Financial Handbook, which was an Amazon #1 New Release across multiple categories including Poverty and LGBTQ Demographic Studies. Her work has been cited in academic texts, and she’s spoken at venues such as Vanderbilt University, the Financial Planning Association and the 529 Conference. Here at PocketSmith, Brynne covers personal finance within American financial systems.
