Isn't it about time to talk about time?

Published March 7, 2019

By Joe Mavretic

by Joe Mavretic, former House Speaker and NC SPIN panelist, March 6, 2019.

The other day an attorney friend of mine reminded me the his time was money. That phrase has been around a long time. It occurred to me that we ought to turn it around and start saying thatmoney is time.

In our world, which is dominated by all sorts of numbers, there are two very important ones that you seldom connect-your time and how much things cost. This article uses some simple arithmetic to encourage you to think about how you exchange your minutes for the things you buy.

First : Two NUMBERS and two ASSUMPTIONS. In a normal year (forget leap year), there are 8760 total hours (365X24=8760). This is a hard number- no more, no less. Now assume that you work forty hours a week for fifty weeks each year or two thousand hours each year (40X50=2000). Each hour has sixty minutes thus there are one hundred and twenty thousand minutes in a work year (60X2000=120,000). This is a hard number-no more, no less.The other assumption is that you work for an hourly wage and take home a paycheck after all the deductions (your disposable weekly income)

What you are doing, called working, is actually trading your time for money; put another way, you are trading your life for dollars. In our market economy, which is consumption-driven, you then exchange most of your dollars for goods, usage or services. The things for which you exchange your dollars have a "Price" or "Cost" that is never expressed in your time. In fact, you have been taught all your life not to think in terms of your time but to think in an easy cost/dollar equation that avoids your financial conditions. If you are like most folks, you ask, "How much does this cost or what is the price?"....and then decide if you can afford it. There is another way to value the way you exchange your life for goods, usage or services. Instead of an item’s "Price," call it your "LIFE COST." To find out your Life Cost, you must learn to do your own personal math and then apply your math to your exchanges.

Below is an example based upon take-home pay (disposable income) of ten dollars an hour.

At $10.00 an hour, every minute is worth about $00.16+ (a little bit more than sixteen cents). At $1.80 a dozen, each egg costs $0.15

At $1.92 a dozen, each egg costs $0.16                                                                                                                      At $2.04 a dozen, each egg costs $0.17

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At $10.00 an hour, you have to work about eleven minutes (life cost) to buy a dozen eggs that cost $1.80 (1.80 ч .16= 11)

Start thinking about this.........

There are 480 earning minutes in an eight hour work day.

How many of your earning minutes does anything cost (life cost)?

How to do your 3-Step LIFE COST math.

1. Divide the total amount of your paycheck by the number of minutes that you worked in the pay-period. The result is the value of each of your earning minutes.

Example:

You worked six eight hour days and got a $427.00 paycheck

Six 8 hour days times 480 minutes in a working day=2880 minutes (6X480=2880). Divide $427.00 by 2880 minutes and the result is the value of each one of your earning minutes (427ч2880=14+).

So, for you, each minute you work earns you a little over fourteen cents ($00.14+).

  1. Divide the cost of anything you want to purchase by

    the value of your personal earning minute.

  2. The result is your personal "Life Cost" for that item.

Below are some Life Costs for a person taking home $8.90 an hour or earning about fourteen cents $0.14 a minute ($8.90 divided by 60 minutes equals a bit over fourteen cents $00.14+).

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  1. The life cost of a $1.00 soft drink is seven minutes.
  2. The life cost of a $10.00 movie is over an hour.
  3. The life cost of a $25 dollar shirt is over 178 minutes or almost three hours.

Now think about big ticket items in terms of Life Cost for a person taking home $8.90 an hour.

  1. The life cost of a $1,200.00 refrigerator is about 135 hours or about 3 1/2 work weeks.
  2. The life cost of a new $22,000 car is about 2472 hours or 61 work weeks.

This way of thinking doesn’t apply to just hourly employees, it can apply to everyone. It also highlights the value of skills and education.

Below are some examples based upon a 40 hour work week and 50 work weeks a year.

1. A person who takes home $20,000.00 a year is worth $10.00 an hour or .16+ cents a minute.

2. A person who takes home $30,000.00 a year is worth $15.00 an hour or .25 cents a minute.

3. A person who takes home $50,000.00 a year is worth $25.00 an hour or .41+ cents a minute.

If you take the time to figure out the monetary value of your working life, you should be able to start asking smarter questions about your personal buying habits.

" The Price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." Henry David Thoreau