Posted by Lending Club :: November 17, 2007 @ 6:50 am

The value of your time isn’t necessarily the same as what your employer pays you. Knowing what your time is worth can be helpful in making tradeoffs between your time and your money.

I found a useful calculator for determining the value of your time. The calculator takes much more than just your income into account. It looks at where you live, what you pay in taxes, and your work expenses to determine your true net pay. Then it looks at how much time you spend on your job.

You spend more than just your working hours on your job, due to commuting and other work-related activities. Knowing your net pay and the amount of time it takes you to earn it gives your true net hourly wage.

Things get even more interesting when you enter in what you do in your non-work hours. Between sleep, household chores, the kids, and other essential weekly activities, you’re likely left with little free time. By analyzing the number of leisure hours you have relative to working hours, the calculator is able to determine how much you work for each leisure hour and determine what those hours cost you. As a simple example, if you worked 50 hours a week and had 25 hours of free time, then your time would be worth twice your net hourly wage.

Once you have your final number, you’ll know if it’s worth it to use your free time on a project, or pay someone to do it for you. In general, if someone is willing to do a job for less than the value of your time, you should pay for the work to be done. If you’re short on cash, you can always fund a project with a P2P loan from Lending Club. Whatever you decide to do, knowing what your time is worth will help you to make an informed decision.

Now that you know what your time is really worth, be sure to make the most of it!