The Value Proposal (Part 1)

Since starting this blog, I’ve talked to certain people who think I’m advocating for everyone to start living like they are poor. 😂 Nothing could actually be further from the truth! Spending intentionally doesn’t mean you need to cut spending on the things you truly enjoy in life. If done right, it actually means you get to spend more on those core values! In turn, you’ll want to mitigate spending on those low to no-value expenses.

So, you might be asking yourself: what are my core values? What’s considered low-value? How do I even go about figuring this whole thing out? You better not take away my daily Frappuccino!!!

Relax! 🤪 I’m not here to take away anything. In fact, I’m here to help give you more! The intent of this post is to help give you a framework to help you determine which expenses fit best in your budget.

Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez are the co-authors of the book “Your Money or Your Life.” This work is commonly referred to as the first FIRE book yet never used the terminology in the first edition as it was originally published way back in 1992. This publication had a tremendous impact on me personally, as well as many others, as I was in the early stages of learning all I could about personal finance.

In the book, they discuss this idea of “life essence.” They break down the hours you spend earning money vs. the money you spend, and ask you to determine if this gadget you are about to purchase is worth X amount of hours of your life essence. When you really break down the numbers the way Vicki lays it out, it’s a little mind blowing how many hours we toil away at work to purchase things we don’t necessarily need or even want.

Naturally the framework they have laid out is designed to help keep you motivated to be as frugal as possible. Instead of promoting frugality on all fronts, I want to use this model as a starting point to help you find exactly what your core values are, and what you personally might find to be a low or no-value item.

The days of the 40-hour work week have come and gone. The vast majority of people I know spend a hell of a lot more time on their W-2 job than the classic 9-5. Even in the hours you aren’t actively working, how often do work related things pop into your head? If you are anything like me, it’s constantly. 😂

For the purposes of building this framework, let’s say our day job is a standard Monday – Friday schedule. We’ll figure a 40-hour work week; 8AM – 5PM with a 1-hour lunch break at noon. All of a sudden, we are looking at a 45 hour per week commitment and didn’t even factor in the commute yet! 😬

I want you to honestly think about what your schedule would look like with the same pay you are receiving now, but without the responsibilities of that pesky day job. Would you really take the time to put on a suit every weekday? Would you really be spending your lunch time at whatever location with those people? How much time are you really committing to work every week?

Work Related Task	Weekly Hours Spent
Day Job – Working Hours	40
Commute	10
Lunch	5
Morning Routine (Work Clothes, Makeup, Hair)	5
Job Related Illness/Doctor Visit	1
Decompression/Relax Time	5
After Hours/Entertaining Clients	1
Actual Weekly Hours Worked:	67

When tallying up the time we actually spend for work, keep track of everything work related through the course of a few months and average it down to hours per week. Things like catching the office bug or entertaining customers after normal business hours are going to vary from month to month, go with an average for the sake of simplicity.

Above is just an example of the amount of time spent doing things we would rather not be doing. If a particular night out with a customer actually was great, and you would have done it anyway, don’t put that down as a work time commitment. If you have a longer commute because you have to drop the kids off at day care, which is something you wouldn’t be doing if you didn’t have a full-time job, then add it in there. We are simply looking to compile any and all time spent due to the need for this day job.

Alright, so in the above example, we are averaging 67 per hours on our “40-hour” per week job. Kind of mind blowing right? 🤯 I didn’t even factor time spent on weekend emails, meal prep, or work travel, which all could be considered time spent on work related things you would rather be doing something else.

Now let’s get to the nitty gritty and see how much all this hard work is actually paying! According to SoFi, the average US salary in 2025 is $63,795. Let’s instead say that you live in a HCOL area (let’s say NY) thus have a higher salary reflecting the cost of living. The average is showing $78,624 for NY, but us Savvy Solos are better than average 😎 so let’s round that up to $80,000.

We’ll want to take our annual salary, break it down by the week and subtract out the costs to our income incurred by maintaining this day job. This could include lunch with co-workers, commute (gas plus wear and tear on the car), doctor visits (due to work related illness), or anything else that we wouldn’t be buying without a day job. Also, let’s not forget about the big one… income taxes!

Work Related Expense	$
Gross Weekly Pay	$1,538.46
Income Taxes (roughly)	-$370
Commute	-$100
Lunch	-$50
Work Clothes/Makeup	-$50
Job Related Illness/Doctor Visit	-$25
Vacation	-$50
Actual Weekly Pay:	$893.46

The big push back here might be the vacation category. Here’s the deal… Most of us with full time jobs can’t pick up and leave for vacation on a complete whim when the deal of a century hits. We (myself included) have this limited and planned out timeframe that we want to book, and we have to be back in time to get back to work. If you didn’t have a day job, you would have the flexibility to hop on a one-way flight to Japan when a deal hits and enjoy your time there till the next deal popped up to fly back. Or even better, to fly to the next country! In a certain way, the day job is costing us more because of the limited time frame.

Aren’t big on the traveling? Many of us partake in escapism, or some form of entertainment that is encouraged to destress from work. You might be golfing more, going to the movies, buying a boat, or some other activity as a way to deal with the stressors of work. I’m willing to bet that the average cost of these escapisms and/or additional expenses of travel due to a limited time frame are costing us thousands per year.

From this point, the math is simple. Divide your actual weekly pay by the actual weekly hours worked to bring up your hourly pay:

$893.46 / 67 hours = $13.34 per hour

😬

Thought you were making more than that huh? Me too. I actually just saw a sign at a local McDonalds saying that they were hiring for $25 an hour for night shift managers… 👀🤪😂

Hey look, don’t get discouraged by this number. Technically we didn’t factor in health care, company match, or possibly some other bennies your company might be offering. The point of this exercise is to establish a sense of value to each dollar earned.

If your streaming service costs $7 per month, that means it cost you about 30 minutes of your “life-essence.” If your gym membership costs $100 per month, that means about 7.5 working hours of your life is going towards that membership? Is it worth it? Are there cheaper gym memberships that could offer the same if not similar value around you? That answer is up for you to decide.

Now, the original idea of “life essence” was portrayed in a way to inspire frugality. The way I have it laid out here makes it difficult to see how I could possibly be promoting any spending at all. 😂

The truth is that not all jobs are created equal. Some of us absolutely love our jobs, some of us are just surviving; and most of us are somewhere in between. I can’t tell you how to value one hour of your time spent working, but I can tell you that it’s worth knowing your actual hourly pay. How else would we know whether or not that latest trinket is really the value we think it is?

It’s not all about frugality, it’s about spending less on those things that don’t matter so you can spend more on the things that do. Next week, we’ll utilize this platform and reverse it to see how we can bring more value into our lives.

Stay classy Solos! ✌️