Income Vs Richness
May 11th, 2007 Ryan Jones
I’ve been reading The 4 hour workweek by Timothy Ferriss and although I’m only through about 3 chapters I think I could do about 20 blog posts on some of the ideas he presents.
Right now I want to talk about a fallacy that many Americans hold. That is that income determines richness.
Let’s look at an example out of my life: In one of the first jobs I took out of college I made $36,000 / year but left my house at 8:30 and was home by 5:30. I worked from 9-5 Monday through Friday and took a 30 minute lunch.
A later job paid me $50,000 but I left my house at 7:50 and got home at 7:00. I worked from 8:30 until 6, and took a 30-45 minute lunch often at my desk.
Which me was richer? the $36,000 me made about $17/hour…. while the $50,000 me….also made about $17/hour.
At the end of the year, I had more money in the bank working the $50,000 job but I also gave up a lot more of my time.
Sure, money is good – but what good is money if you can’t spend it?
Think about why you want to make more money and you’ll probably list many things you want to do.
What if you could work less AND get those things done? That’s what this book is about. Check it out, it’s certainly been very interesting so far. I’m sure it’ll inspire me to write more in the future.
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5 Comments
1. Andrew | May 11th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Hi Ryan. This could be my Australian sense of sarcasm, but…by “interesting”, do you mean its a good or bad read?
If it is good, it would be great to hear why, because it looks a little cheesy and wishful to me.
2. Ryan | May 11th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Sorry Andrew.. I’ll clarify.
I’ve only read the first couple chapters so far, so I can’t fully gauge the book… but it definitely has me wanting to read more.
I mean interesting in the good way. He makes a lot of good points, but I haven’t yet read enough to know if it’s bullshit or not.
3. Alex Fisher | May 12th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I keep hearing/reading reviews of this book. I think I’m gonna have to finally pick it up and read it.
4. Doom | May 13th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Did you get this from Steve Pavlinas blog? i almost bought it last week, seemed like it would be worth reading even though i think steve P said some of it was crazy, such as not saving for retirement
5. Ryan | May 15th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Who’s Steve Pavlinas? Never seen his blog.
I got this idea out of the book I was reading. Maybe he’s reading the same book?