How to calculate what my time is worth?

[078]

I'm curious how you calculate what your time is worth. The simple answer would be to just take what your salary is and divide that by the number of hours you work to come up with an hourly rate, but I feel that that leaves out a lot of other things. I tend to value my time away from work more than my time at work. Would I be wrong to value my time away from work at a higher rate than what I get paid at work? I'm just curious how everybody else goes around calculating what their time is worth.

[disneysteve]

Good question, and more important than many people realize. Let's say you are trying to decide if you should mow your own lawn. The kid down the street will do it for $20. Is it worth it to you? Maybe you get invited to a focus group and they are going to pay you $30 for an hour of your time. Do you do it?

I think the key is not what you earn at your regular job but rather what you would be doing during that time otherwise. If mowing your lawn means taking 90 minutes out of your weekend and not being able to go to your son's ball game, that's worth a lot more than if it just gets your butt off the sofa and away from the TV.

[rennigade]

I never understood why people start threads and ask "what is my time worth."

No, "what my time is worth" cannot be calculated by your salary and how many hours you work unless you work 24x7 at a job that pays you. That only applies to your current job that you work! You already have an answer for "what is my time worth" in this scenerio.

When you wake up in the morning, what is your routine? Maybe go to the bathroom, bursh your teeth, take a shower, get changed, eat breakfast, read a newspaper, drive your car to work.

So what would it cost you to pay someone to wipe your butt after you went to the bathroom for 5 min? To brush your teeth for 2 min? To wash you for 10 min? To get you changed in 2 min? To serve you breakfast and feed you in 10 min? Catch my drift?

With enough money all of these things could be accomplished by someone other than yourself.

Another stellar thread that no makes sense!! And yes, I posted this from work!

[DebbieL]

No need to be so touchy Renegade. If you find the question a waste of time - don't answer it.

As for the actual question, I find it depends on the task. I am willing to pay my housecleaner $20/hr because I value having a bit of free time much more highly than I value time wasted doing dusting I would gladly have her over to do all my housework if I could afford to. As it is, it's $40/week. I can do something I consider more productive (to me) than housework during those 2 hours I pay her for.

I enjoy walking my dog, so I'm not willing to pay someone else to do so for me. Therefore, the hour or two that it takes I have no real value to put on my time there.

So, for me there is an inverse relationship to what my time is worth based on how much I enjoy doing the task

[078]

The reason that I asked how to calculate my net worth was because I often find myself doing things that I don't necessarily enjoy doing, but what have to be done. Part of me thinks that it's important that I do what I cannot my own, but as DisneySteve mentioned, sometimes doing one thing means giving up doing another. I just thought it would be much easier if I had a good amount that I could apply to those type of situations so that I wasn't constantly second-guessing myself whether it was worthwhile for me to be doing some of the things that I have been doing.