I’ve been reading the book The 4 Hour Workweek. Aside from some unneeded expletives, the ideas in the book so far are great. One example given is similar to the following:
If you were presented with the following 2 jobs, which would you choose?
Job 1: A lawyer earning $160,000/year working 80 hours/week.
Job 2: You are an entrepreneur making $80,000/year working an average of 15 hours/week. If you calculate the relative earnings, you’ll see that job 1 earns about $38.50/hour. Job 2 however, earns about $102.50/hour. Although job 1 earns more per year, its more important to look at the relative earning or hourly earnings. If you work less hours, you have time to DO the things you actually want to do. $160,000/year is great, but if you don’t have any time to use that money, what good is it? Your quality of life is greatly improved by having more time since you have free time to do as you wish. Now you have to make enough money in job 2 to meet your goals of course, but there’s no need to compete with the world to make more and more money. Make enough to meet your goals and be comfortable and enjoy your means.
This is called relative earnings. Being aware of such differences in opportunities puts control in your hands. Your time is very valuable.
Finding/having the motivation to look for and work for those unique opportunities is key to achieving that greater quality of life. First, you need to decide what your real goal is. Why do you want to make that $100,000/year? Maybe to pay your bills/mortgage down faster, or to have a more comfortable retirement. I’ve seen friends retiring that return to work, because they found that they needed to have something to do. If you had that second job at $102/hour and only working 15 hours/week, you would not be working as long of hours (compared to the first job) and so would be more like a life of a retired person already. If retirement is your goal, you have to make your life interesting enough to want that free time. Otherwise you’ll get bored very quickly and want to go back to work just for something to do.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I’ve been meaning to read that book and still will even though I’m none to keen on this idea. While the math is right, the fact remains that a higher per hour wage is only good if it can support your lifestyle while working less hours. For instance, less time working can equate to more time spending money.
In the end, the lawyer is still making more money per year. And the big assumption is that one can do something that will pay $102.50 per hour. If that’s possible for the common person, and this book explains how, then I can’t wait to read it.