Time is Money

Were those five minutes of my time really worth the 20 cents?

Explanation: Last night I got a text message. It wasn't from someone I knew - it was some MP3 service sending me spam of some sort. I've never seen a text like that before. The details don't really matter. The important fact is that I have text messaging blocked on my phone... or at least I thought I did.

This is the kind of thing that really drives me nuts. I'm supposed to have text messages blocked. I clearly don't anymore. There's no way I'm going to let Verizon charge me 20 cents for a text message that I shouldn't have received in the first place. No way. Plus, this message might be the tip of the iceberg. I had to nip it in the bud, so I gave Verizon a call.

After five minutes on the phone with Verizon, we established that my block had been removed for some reason. The block has now been re-applied to my account. They were unsure if the 20 cents would be refunded to me automatically, so I have to check my next bill and let them know if the charge is still there (more time and effort) to make sure I'm not paying for a text message I didn't want in the first place.

From a sheer economic standpoint, this drives me insane. My time is money. Now, how much money one's time is worth is a different debate, but I like to base decisions on an amount that I think I could easily earn in an hour's time. The New Jersey minimum wage is currently $7.15, so that's a safe place to start. I like to think I bring a bit more to the table, so I generally assume $10 an hour. Certainly I could make more than that if I was working harder, but I feel like that's a wage I could pull in without really exerting myself too much.

Once you have a dollar value, decisions are easier. Do I pay the neighborhood guy $30 each time he mows my lawn? Well, I can mow my entire lawn in about an hour, so I can consider that as $10 worth of time. Is it worth paying $30 to preserve $10 worth of time? No way. I'll mow my own lawn.

Now, obviously some experiences have some intrinsic value (or lack thereof) that you have to include as well. Would I spend $30 for the neighborhood guy to spend an hour removing the poison ivy from my backyard? Sure I would. My time is worth $10, and not spending an hour handling poison ivy is worth much more than $20 to me.*

On the other side of the coin, I wouldn't pay the guy $5 to wash my car for an hour on a hot summer afternoon. Sure, my time is worth $10, but spending an hour in the cold mist of the hose is worth way more than the $5 I'd save by letting him do it.

Now, let's consider my phone call. I spent 5 minutes of my time in an effort to save 20 cents. That's an hourly savings of $2.40. My time is worth about $10 an hour. You do the math. Even worse is the fact that A) you just know they're going to screw up my bill anyway, so I have to keep an eye on it and B) when they do screw it up I'm going to have to spend ANOTHER 5 minutes on the phone with them. That takes me up to about 15 minutes of total effort, taking the hourly savings down to 80 cents an hour.

So, in short, I hate Verizon. And now I have the math to prove it!

*Plus, I have to add value for the pleasure of knowing that guy is going to be itching for the next two weeks. That'll teach him to up his rates!