There is an adage that time is money, and on so many levels this can be verified.

The unfortunate part of the time-money dynamic is that for many people, there rarely is a harmonious and sustainable balance of the two.

Either you have slightly more time than money or the opposite, but either way you are in need. This has led to the formation of cottage industries to address those needs.

Concierges and personal assistants have long been a source of relief for those who can’t seem to get everything accomplished within a 24-hour day. The luxuries of concierges and personal assistants have long been the perks of those with above-average financial means, but the Internet is an equalizer.

Although I am not 100 percent sure of all the distinctions between concierges and personal assistants, the virtual varieties offer opportunities on both sides of the computer. Many people have found a personal services business can be the ideal home business.

Online concierge services such as asksunday.com offer a range of services from booking a flight to texting you with reminders to getting directions. Plans begin at under $30 per month and 24/7 request supported by e-mail or telephone.

Longerdays.com is a full-service virtual personal assistant firm. Whenever I think of a personal assistant, the image of a notepad toting person trailing a titan of industry comes to mind. I thought this image would be difficult to duplicate digitally, but Longerdays comes close.

With services such as gift buying and updating your Netflix queue for you, it is easy to see how such a service could turn the average person into a couch potato.

Both virtual concierge and personal assistant companies do one thing very well. They leverage technology to provide a service that most working adults today could both use and afford.

Now, let’s say you find yourself in the situation where you need a little more time and money. You can create your own virtual personal assistant and concierge. Many companies offer online bill payment, so this can save you the time of writing checks and mailing out bills, and save the price of the stamp, envelope and check.

This should take care of most of your monthly recurring expenses, with the exception of your mortgage or your rent. If you rent, then rentomatic.com may be for you. Rentomatic allows renter’s to pay their rent online, and it allows landlords to send out invoices and reminders. The catch for rentomatic is that the landlord must have an account in order to offer it to their tenants.

Quincey Hobbs has more than 10 years’ experience as a team member at the University of Arizona’s Center for Computing and Information Technology and as an instructor at Pima Community College. Send questions to quinceyresponds@yahoo.co.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Edge. Tags for this post: Columnist, Edge-Government, Edge-Government-Columnist, Edge-Personal Finance, Edge-Personal Finance-Columnist, Government, page-a02, Personal Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.