While most people, especially those attending academic institutions with rigorous payment schedules or with loans at financial institutions, will think of 'late fees' as applying to those who pay a penalty for not meeting their obligations on time, the term also has a broader meaning.

As final year management student at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Tanisha, points out, there is implicitly a penalty for being late at anything.

"If you are late for work you will not produce as much, hence it will cost the organisation, which will reduce its profits and hence it will not be able to pay its employees as much as it could if this was not the case. If you are late then work will pile up, leaving you with less productive time for your own pursuits outside the workplace, as well as with the family," she said.

Tanisha also says that the person who is late tends to either get caught in a rush or is forced to make hasty, costly decisions. "If you are late buying schoolbooks then chances are you will have to buy costlier stock, or spend productive time in a crowded line. If you miss the supermarket and have to buy some grocery items at the gas station then you will be paying a much higher price than you would have otherwise," she said.

She advises that people look at their lives as a business enterprise would structure the work day, so that they are on time and even ahead of time.

"Time really is money and people would be surprised how much extra they spend or could otherwise earn when they are consistently late," she said.

One very obvious cost to being late, even though some do not recognise it as a root cause, is traffic accidents and the resulting physical and financial toll. Speeding is consistently tabbed as the number one cause of accidents, with many people rushing from one point to another as quickly as possible in order to 'make up time'.

But as the popular saying goes 'time lost can never be regained' and the costs of trying on the nation's roads are high and horrifying.

"Yes, oftentimes when a car is involved in an accident the driver will say that they were really in a hurry," a representative at a brokerage contacted by STAR CENTS said. "And sometimes they are late in reporting the accident, which can be another penalty on top of that," she said.