Monday, June 02, 2003

I came to a very valuable conclusion this morning while delivering "antique" furniture to an elderly person. Time is the most precious commodity, especially my time. Due to the ineptitude of my father/Stalin/boss I had to drive across town multiple times for an otherwise simple delivery. He had forgotten to take down the gentleman's phone number, which is problematic when you are hours late in delivering the merchandise. No about the man would be gone but to appease my father I delivered it all the same. Luckily today I had a helper, who must be Yosemite Sam's real life counterpart. And, like the beloved Warner character he is very two dimensional and lacking any intelligence whatsoever. All in all the numerous trips to and fro were a wonderful experience, slightly less agonizing then having a rusted fork inserted in your rectum. Onto my revelation.

Time is truly precious. However what you do with said time is not really important. Whether one spends it working with the handicap or stuffing their face with Taco Bell is of little consequence. What matters is controlling ones time. Choosing the tempo of the day is where the value comes from. One minute of my day is priceless. Granted several thousand dollars a week would cushion the loss, but does it really?

Let’s say you work at a company doing a job you detest and make "good" money. For simplicities sake lets say $50,000 a year, which is several thousand dollars above the national average. Also, to stay away form any moral obligations to family, you are single as well. Now imagine you are working in a boring, meaningless job that offers nothing save for a steady paycheck. You work a mandatory forty hour week, and are obligated to attend an occasional conference. Over the course of the next year you will spend at the very minimum 2,080 hours at work. Converting your salary to an hourly wage comes up with roughly $24.38 an hour. Of course this is before taxes. Using a very conservative estimate of thirty-five percent going to Social Security, Federal, State and Sales taxes you are actually left with $32,500 in salary or $15.62 am hour.

Since you have a fairly good job it is necessary to drive a reasonably nice car so you splurge a little and get a $30,000 SUV resulting in a monthly payment of circa $500.00. Full coverage insurance runs around $250.00 per quarter. Due to a horrific roommate experience in college you opt to live alone in a 1 bedroom studio apartment. Rent is $550.00 a month. Essential utilities, i.e. water, gas, and a telephone run on average $75.00 per month. To keep costs down you forgo a girlfriend and instead get the full service cable package, including high speed internet access and cinamax. Cost is nearly $100.00 a month. Obviously you need a cell phone, with lots of minutes since it is necessary to talk incessantly on the phone while driving, eating and picking your ass. The plan costs $40.00 a month. Since you are single and tired from working a long a day you order out quite a bit leading to a $300.00 monthly food budget. Due to the immense generosity of your company health/dental/eye coverage is include in your salary with relatively low co-pay. Still it does add up to nearly $500.00 per year due to your childhood addiction to an asthma inhaler.

I am going to assume you are like me and have no social life other then the occasional movie therefore your luxury budget will be paltry $700.00 a year. By the grace of God credit cards have never been an attraction so you have no high interest debt. Of course you do owe $40,000 in student loans because your parents were cheap bastards. Wanting to eliminate the debt as soon as possible you pay in $5000.00 a year. The cost for all these life essentials is $25,980. Subtract that from your final gross income and you are left with a little over $6500. Divide that up by the number of hours worked and you get $3.14 an hour. That is the real wage you earn after calculating in all the junk that comes with having a $50,000 salary.

By the way don't tell me that the above figures are inflated, because I was low balling throughout, if anything the costs should be higher.

The point of the above exercise was to demonstrate what you really get in exchange for your time. Sure a nice cushy desk job paying nearly a $1000.00 a week sounds great but don't forget the hidden costs, in particular what it takes to maintain the job. Realistically a human being could live on much less but that isn't going to happen, the more you make means the more you spend. The problem is that the ratio between time and money earned is heavily skewed in favor of time spent rather then money gained. My time is worth much more then a measly $3.00 an hour.

Then again I live off the fruit of my parent's loins

Today's lesson: Never move away from home or strive for any professional success as it is ultimately fruitless and a waste of time. In other words be like Bob.


and remember my motto

go to hell