For years, Marit Burmood, CPA, EA, worked toward a seat on the advisory board for a tax group she taught. Only the most knowledgeable people sat on it. When the invitation finally came, “I knew in my heart this might not be the best move,” Marit says. She said ‘yes’ anyway. A couple of months in, she wrote her resignation letter.
On Episode 39 of She Counts, host Nancy McClelland and Marit dig into the irony of explaining opportunity cost to clients but rarely running the calculation for ourselves. They argue that evaluating opportunities based on emotion, one at a time, without counting the related sacrifices is costing women more than we realize.
Why we say yes before doing the math
Nancy calls out the feelings behind these decisions: Status matters, and so does respect. Marit agrees, with one condition: “The emotion can sit in the back seat or the passenger seat, but they can’t drive.”
The trap cuts both ways. One side is the fear that the chance won’t come again. The other is the fear that “I’m not good enough for it yet,” which keeps us from trying. Nancy adds that women “have historically had to prove their competence and credibility,” so we say ‘yes’ to show we can be counted on.
Once we commit, walking away gets harder. “Accountants aren’t quitters,” Marit says. She resigned but felt terrible about letting down the man who invited her, a longtime mentor. She learned, “Everything we say ‘yes’ to has a cost, even if it doesn’t have monetary value.”
Your calendar is a portfolio, and time is the asset you can’t rebuild
Nancy wonders if the real problem is judging one decision at-a-time. Marit offers an investing analogy. You assess individual stocks, but you also manage the whole portfolio and sometimes cut the losers.
“You can literally lose every dollar in your bank account” and rebuild, Marit says, but you can’t get time back. At 43, she knows half her life is already gone. Stack up enough yeses, Nancy warns, and we end up with “a portfolio we didn’t intend to build.”
Marit lived it. Speaking at post-tax-season conferences meant missing her kids’ last day of school three years in a row. No pickup, no blasting “School’s Out for the Summer,” and no ice cream. This year, an unpaid conference landed on that date, and she turned it down. “It hurts to say no,” she admits.
Count the full cost, not just the event day
Jennifer Dymond often sends Nancy recovery memes on social media because Nancy rarely makes time to clear email, catch up on sleep, do laundry and rebuild energy.
Marit used to rush home to her twin 8-year-olds and her 10-year-old and walk straight into stories, squabbles and owies, with zero recovery. Last time, she booked a flight that landed after the kids were asleep, then took an Uber home. “That night of recovery made a world of difference.”
For Nancy, Advisory Amplified looked like “six days over three weeks.” Counting travel, each of the six cities took three days. And booking all the travel and lodging took two-and-a-half days.
So what’s the solution? First, know where your time goes. Mariette Martinez color-codes her Google Calendar and can filter it to see how much time she spent with family. Marit tried it and showed her kids how much family time she logged that month when they complained she was “always working”. For a lighter option, try Sharrin Fuller’s time audit: guess your hours first, then track them. She reasons, “the bigger the gap, the more careful you have to be moving forward.”
But watch the blank spots. Nancy lost 45 minutes to an accidental Dolly Parton rabbit hole and another 45 to a “quick question” call with David Leary. Both were enjoyable, but neither was planned.
The four-step opportunity cost audit
You can’t judge the cost until you know what you’re building, so take time to define and rank your personal and professional goals. Then:
- Step 1: List your commitments. Your calendar will show you quickly what you said ‘yes’ to.
- Step 2: Run the numbers. Weigh the returns, including financial, career, relationships, learning and energy. Then add prep, travel, admin, follow-up and recovery to the cost.
- Step 3: Ask the uncomfortable question. “Would I choose this again?” Marit found the joy of missing out (JOMO) by filling the time she freed with higher-ranked priorities like froyo with her kids and, that same week, a two-to-three-hour in-person recording of the Universal Accounting podcast.
- Step 4: Decide for each commitment. Keep it, change it, delegate it, renegotiate it, finish it or let it go.
Money belongs in the ranking. “As women, it’s okay to say we want to do things for money,” Marit says. She once ranked money so low it caused stress elsewhere. Nancy asks, “What does enough look like for you?” The point, she says, is to stop letting your calendar “have a direct transfer to your bank account of time, energy and money.”
Choose the price you’re willing to pay
“Maybe ambition isn’t the problem after all,” Nancy says, reframing the conversation. What matters is whether you’re consciously choosing the price you pay. Marit isn’t asking anyone to stop being ambitious… only to be intentional about it. If you choose to keep a passion project that pays nothing, she says, “I better not complain” about its cost.
They close with a quote from Annie Dillard: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Listen to the full episode, then answer this question on the She Counts LinkedIn page: Which commitment in your “portfolio” would you choose differently?