Revealed: How Long You Should Work To Afford The Things You Love

4 min read By eCompareMo on February 28, 2020

When you have money in your pocket, the world readily offers you a lot of opportunities to take it from you.

New restaurants to visit, seat sales for your dream trip abroad, a deluxe model of the Nike shoes you’ve been longing to have, that new Samsung phone model, and even those bills that greet you every month. Whether you are a professional or an entrepreneur, anyone who earns money gives in to these temptations sometimes.

There’s no harm in indulging in your pleasures every now and then, but you should know if you are really getting your money’s worth. More specifically, it’s time you should learn your time’s worth because as Benjamin Franklin wrote, time is money. Our time is the capital we exchange as humans for the things we want in life, be it relationships, career, and material possessions.

(Read: Best Time To Buy Clothes, Gadgets, Appliances To Save Money)

According to Gettysburg College, a person spends an average of 90,000 hours at work in a whole lifespan. That is one-third of your life.

It can be said that you are exchanging units of time from your life to afford that lavish buffet at a posh hotel or that brand new flagship phone on your hand. Have you ever wondered how much of your time is used to allow you to afford those things?

The tables below will show you. We calculated the work hours equivalent to the price of the product or services you avail of.

Conditions and disclaimers:

• For easier computation, we define a week of work as having five days or 40 hours.
• In relation to this, the term “one day” does not mean the scientific 24 hours our clocks tell but it refers to the eight hours of duty in a job.
• The computed salary is gross income to get simplified answer.
• The price of each product may change any time of the day prior to this writing.
• The figures on the column “equivalent time of work” may not be exact to the final numbers obtained from the computation. These numbers are rounded off or slightly adjusted for the simplicity of data presentation. For example, three hours and 47 minutes may be shown as four hours or a half-day work to avoid complications. Likewise, seven hours and some minutes may be shown as eight hours.
• The numerical values are a rough estimate and they may differ upon applicable variables.

How much time an employee with a monthly pay of P15K, P30K, and P60K must work to afford their favorite things

An employee earning P15,000 a month

An employee earning P30,000 a month

An employee earning P60,000 a month

(Read: 5 Ways To Keep FOMO From Ruling Your Life And Draining Your Wallet)

By comparing the three tables, the figures reveal a very familiar financial lesson in a new light with how we use our money: live within your means.

For products of the same price, professionals of varying salary brackets will serve different lengths of work to get the amount of pay equivalent to the price of each item. Additionally, those in the lower bracket will have to work longer to afford these products.

We don’t pay convenience and our favorite things with money, but with hours of life. So, if we keep buying what we don’t need, or more specifically, what we can’t afford, then we are wasting our lives on wrong priorities.