An Hour Saved is an Hour Earned

If you haven’t heard it before, time is precious.

I realized at my temp job today that the phrase a penny saved is a penny earned could also be related to time in a way. Since temp work is paid hourly us contract workers are more aware of each hour passing at various points during the day.

When anyone earns money you can technically always break it down to how much you earn an hour. I remember thinking this way back in high school, and so when I was at the store considering a purchase, or at a restaurant considering my order, for instance, I would think of how many hours I worked to earn what I was about to spend. Was that meal worth two hours of work? Would that fancy pair of jeans be worth three? How about that necklace, was it worth one? I think these concepts put things in perspective, especially when your paycheck is still pretty small. You can also bring this idea full circle, and think: “Well if I spent an hours worth of work on buying this, then I only have 39 more hours of pay this week (give or take a few, maybe) to work from, so that leaves me with *this* much.”

Obviously, you should pay bills first, and donate and purchase necessities first, but I think that this can still be a great mindset to limit purchases. “Is this new phone/fill-in-the-blank worth the 40 hours I spent working on that hard project at work, or 40 hours of babysitting, or Ubering, or whatever.