[icosa]

I think Sean McClure's advice only applies when you have so much of one resource that you can afford to be inefficient when trading it for another.

If you have so little cash you have to choose between paying the water bill or the gas bill because you can't afford both, spending time to optimize your cash is a matter of survival. Poor people are also criticized if they don't penny pinch.

College students are often cash-poor but time-rich, so it makes sense they would pinch their pennies and consume time to preserve the scarce resource of cash.

Tech professionals are often time-poor but cash-rich, so it makes sense to pinch their minutes and spend cash to preserve the scarce resource of time.

And for the many in poverty who are both cash-poor and time-poor, time is usually the more flexible resource and so they pinch pennies.