We spend over 50% of our waking lives at work. Did you ever think of that?
Do the math for yourself. How many hours do you spend at work each day, and how many more are you awake and not working?
Go ahead and calculate it. I’ll wait.
I’m typically at work between 8:15a-4:45p. That’s 8.5hrs.
I wake up at 6:30a and try to get to bed for 10:30p. That’s only 7.5hrs left in my waking life per day, not spent at work. Subtract another hour for commuting, another hour between getting ready and packing my stuff for the day, and the ratio between work : non-work gets even bleaker.
We spend over 50% of our waking lives at work.
And most people don’t even like their work.
Think about that. We spend over half of our waking life doing something we don’t want to be doing!
WHYYY THO.
Let’s step back and remember why we all get a job in the first place.
Well we have to work so we can collect a paycheck.
A paycheck to afford things.
Things like housing and food.
Okay, fair enough. We need enough money in life to afford the basic needs.
Leveling Up
Generally speaking (and that’s a big “generally”), we could afford the most basic needs working a minimum wage job 40hours a week and get by just fine.
The problem is, most of us don’t want to be just fine. And we want more than the most basic needs. We also don’t want to have to think so hard about every purchase, or stress about money.
This leads us to the conclusion that we need to somehow get a leg up on our peers in order to secure a job that will pay us more than minimum wage.
For many of us, we get a leg up by pouring thousands of dollars and hours into post-secondary education to get an additional degree. The promise of this degree is that it will allow us to make a better salary, so we can live in a way that is more comfortable. More comfortable brings with it the flexibility to go out to eat on occasion, purchase new things when we need them without stress, and generally to not live paycheck to paycheck in quite the same fashion.
Once we achieve a lifestyle that is more comfortable however, many of us get the itch to take it even further.
Comfortable just isn’t enough anymore. We want to have above average wealth. We bust our butts working overtime, we take on extra projects and responsibility, and bend over backwards to impress our boss and set ourselves up for the next promotion. It all feels worth it, because we know that new promotion will come with a big, new, shiny salary.
So we work really hard at a job we don’t love for the reward of above average wealth.
We achieve that shiny, new salary. Yey.
Now the question is….What do we do with it?
Here’s where many of us run into trouble.
Different people take different approaches to managing their shiny salary. We’re going to focus on two.
The rational being.
The logical, rational person knows they work their crappy, stressful job in the first place to be able to afford the basic needs in life.
They know that they’re making far more than they need, so they keep their cost of living low, meet their basic needs, perhaps get themselves to a place that is comfortable, then save the rest.
Saving the rest allows us to sock that money away for future basic needs. It could allow us to retire a little earlier than originally planned, work 3 or 4 days a week instead of the full 5, or to make a career change that we would otherwise consider financially risky. Saving the rest gives us freedom and flexibility.
The emotional being.
But most of us aren’t necessarily rational. We’re emotional.
We work hard to obtain above average wealth, so we reward ourselves. Above the basic needs, we spend the rest on junk we don’t need and lavish perks in life- new clothing so we can stay on trend, accessories, décor for our homes, kitchen gadgets, bougie face creams, and the newest iphone. We eat out way more than any person ought to, pay for Ubers rather than taking transit, and participate in expensive beauty rituals.
What we fail to recognize is this aggressive spending leaves us back at square one, without much in savings and still very much in a position of needing to work. We get caught on this hamster wheel of working to live, spending excess on things to make us feel better about the job we hate, and thereby keeping us chained to it even longer.
When we’re getting by just fine, we might not be in a position to do something about that. When we have above average wealth however, we have options!
The problem is doing what we actually want to be doing almost certainly means taking a pay cut. But we’ve gotten comfortable with our above average wealth, and we’re not willing to part with it. For many of us, the desire to keep above average wealth will keep us in a career we dislike for decades.
If this is you, fear not. Remember, you have options.
Lucky for you, your salary has provided you with freedom – freedom to decide what to do with your excess.
You can follow the treat yo’ self lifestyle that the majority of the population lives today.
OR
You can live a little more simply by quitting the mindless spending in order to give your future self the freedom to spend your time doing what you actually want to be doing.
For me, I’m choosing the latter.
If you haven’t read it, find out why in my story about how this all started.