On... What's our Time Worth?

How much is our hourly rate? People chase money, but is the extra time we put into earning worth our time?

You definitely need to put in the minimum time at work to fulfill your basic necessities of putting food on the table, a roof over your head, and paying bills. However, after fulfilling that, how much time do you want to put at work versus enjoying your life?

My father in law was diagnosed with cancer and his medical bill was around 100k for chemotherapy. Unfortunately, that did not work, and he passed away. My auntie was recently diagnosed with cancer, and she paid around 100k for chemotherapy. As of now, she is still doing fine and I hope she continues to recover.

The reason I brought up these stories, is because they made me think of time versus money. 100k is what we may pay to live longer (if only just for an extra year?). How much longer we don't know. Sometimes medical treatment doesn't work, but the gist is we are willing to pay a lot just to have more time.

The other way to look at it is, the time you're putting in at work now is paying for the time you're able to extend for your future self. If I use the value of 100k (to extend your life by a year) and assume your work hours of 1920 hours per year (8 hour workday, 5 days a week), the hourly rate comes to 52AUD/hr.

As a rough guide, this is a good starting point to value your hourly rate. So, if you have to work overtime or work a second job, ask yourself if it is 52AUD/hr? If it is not, better spend your time doing something else. Same goes for chores, pay a helper if it is below you hourly rate.

We value our time differently when we are young (spending a lot of time to chase dollars) versus when we are old (spending a lot of money to extend our tine). Perhaps, we should be more rational.