Trading One Form of Poverty for Another

Unless you're a Rothschild or a Rockefeller, you have, at one point or another, known poverty. And when I say poverty, I'm not limiting it to not having enough money. It could be not having enough time, not having enough vitality (e.g. sick, depressed), or not having enough opportunities due to discrimination against gender, race, or age.

I grew up knowing the importance of money - how it can buy nice stuff, how it can happily isolate you from the crowd that you don't want to be with, how sometimes you can buy time with it, and a million other things that you can do or avoid doing if you had it. So for the most part of my existence, it's been about getting a better job that would allow me to earn more and spend more.

And then I started noticing how the pursuit of money gave me less time to take care of my body. I get less time to sleep, no time to exercise, and no time to prepare healthy food. And as we've seen, not having enough time IS a form of poverty. Being sickly IS a form of poverty. So it then makes me ask myself, am I just sacrificing my health to get more money? Am I allowing myself to lose time so that I can have money? Am I just trading one form of poverty for another?

How does one achieve balance?