This is optimal living daily stop measuring your purchases in dollars measure them in hours of your life instead and watch everything change by Charlie Brown of simple and straightforward dot sub stack calm And I'm just a maulic welcome back to our usual Sunday bonus episode if you're new here on Sundays I share an extra episode from one of the other podcast in the optimal living daily network usually overlapping with the kinds of themes that come up Here definitely the case today because we've talked about dollars representing hours of your life before that's what we'll be hearing about today And this is coming from optimal finance daily the second show we ever launched still going strong after many many years And you can follow or subscribe to that show wherever you're hearing this if you enjoy what you're about to hear that goes a long way to keep this show going as well So that was get right to the post and commentary from Diana of optimal finance daily as we optimize our life Stop measuring your purchases in dollars measure them in hours of your life instead and watch everything change by Charlie Brown of simple and straightforward Dot sub stack calm time is money is back to front money is in fact time Spend enough of your waking hours on this platform and you'll see this phrase dotted about that money isn't life's finite resource Time is that you should consider how many hours it takes to make the money to buy the thing because your time is worth something It's a mindset. I'm fully committed to but when everyone around you still measures their purchases and money not time It doesn't make for an easy mindset shift. I still struggle with it all So let's write this time money merry go round together, shall we? What measuring your purchases in hours of your life actually looks like There are a few ways to do this But by far the easiest way is to figure out your hourly wage Then use that as a unit of measurement for all future purchases Earned $20 an hour after tax and spend $20 on a takeout pizza that pizza costs you an hour of your life Spend $1,500 a month on rent or mortgage and bills.
That's 75 hours or nearly two weeks of an average 40-hour work week It's a magic way of looking at life because it really is tangible You remember what it was like to work that hour how you felt were those hours worth it to buy the thing you've got your eye on In my experience this mindset shift works best when you're deciding whether to do something you don't really want to do Say some colleague You're not that keen on ask you to go to their birthday dinner You've got to buy a gift you've got to pay for your dinner and likely a portion of the birthday person's dinner too There might be pre or after dinner drinks the cab to and from the venue before you know it You're racking up three or four hundred dollars on someone you're not even that bothered about using the $20 an hour example You've had to work 15 or 20 hours for that evening. Is it worth it? Probably not for me That's the tipping point the thought of working that hard for someone I don't care about will always trump the social faux pas of RSVPing no It's hard because you're told your time is worthless Here's where this theory gets into sticky waters society tells us that money is the most important measurement in life your time now That's pretty worthless think about it We're told that working harder for less pay is normal that unpaid overtime is just what you do to get ahead There's pressure to not take your allotted annual leave to the tune of 768 million unused days a year in America alone when it comes to work and thus money your time is not considered your own Instead it's in the hands of your boss or your clients who will try to get as much out of you for as a little money as possible Society tells you your time isn't worth much. So why would you use it as a measurement for purchases?
It's like the time I asked my friend who had just bought a very expensive house if he had considered how many hours of his life He will have to work in order to buy it. What does it matter? He told me I've got to work 40 to 50 hours per week for the rest of my life anyway And besides everyone hates their job He didn't consider that he could work fewer hours if he bought a cheaper place or that his place was going to cost him years of his life Because it's not the way we're taught to think we're taught money first time second Switching these priorities around isn't easy when no one around you is doing the same, but it could save you What measuring purchases in time can do for you? For a start it'll make you a more intentional sender ask the question How many hours of my life does this item cost and I'll wager you'll consider how badly you want that thing or experience much more than if you think Hey, it's just $50.
What does that matter? It could save you thousands It'll also make you value your time much much more constantly thinking about how you spend the hours of your life throws How you're spending them into sharp focus once you get into the habit you'll find it easier to value your time over money Which psychologists say is awesome for your happiness and well-being more time more money more happiness? It's all the good things my friends all the good things You just listen to the post titled stop measuring your purchases in dollars measure them in hours of your life instead and watch everything change By Charlie Brown of simple and straightforward dot sub stack calm I first got exposed to this concept of valuing your purchases in terms of the time It will take you to earn the money to acquire them in the book your money or your life by Vicki Robin and Jodominguez Just like money time is a resource, but unlike money time is not a renewable resource I think that's why this exercise is so confronting it makes us more aware of the fact that the time we're spending earning money is gone So in a way to be thoughtful about how we're spending our money is a way to honor the time that we're alive The reality is that the way we spend any resource whether that's time money or energy is a reflection of what we value It gets uncomfortable when we notice a disparity between the way we're spending our resources and what we really value deep down If we say we value time with family and our relationships and yet we're spending most of our time working to afford a life of luxury There's a disconnect there. I found for me this disconnect was really driven by my consumerist conditioning But with some soul searching this can be corrected and I found the book your money or your life very helpful in that regard And I think that'll do it for today.
Hope you're having a great day Thanks for being here and I'll see you on tomorrow's episode where your optimal life awaits