How much of your day is really yours?

It’s no secret; I want to retire, and I want to retire soon. Its not that I have anything against working. I rather enjoy my field and seeing the people I help. I suspect that even after I retire (granting I can do it early) I’ll continue to work in some fashion.

What I don’t want to waste any more time on is working for someone else. I hate knowing that I’m working 45+ hours every week to line the pockets of a man I’ve never met. Its like Office Space. if I work really hard and save the company $5,000 (like last month) I don’t earn any extra money. Heck I don’t even get an acknowledgement. Yet, when I mess up you can bet your buttons everyone knows. This obviously bothers me.

I am giving away the prime years of my life for a few thousand dollars. Not only prime years but on a more basic scale also the prime hours. Think about it, you have 24 hours a day to work with. Actually, less but lets go with 24. In most cases a minimum of 9 hours are spent at work (8 hours working – 1 hour lunch). Hopefully 8 hours are spent sleeping. Figure you spend a bare minimum of 30 minutes getting ready in the morning; although, I bet it’s actually quite a bit more. Lets then say your commuting 30 minutes each way, that’s an hour of unpaid driving time.

So far just with these work and sleep related things you only have 5 ½ hours for you. How do you spend that time? An hour for dinner, paying bills, 30 minutes reading a book or magazine? When you look at it that way any you time you get in those 5 ½ hours is pretty precious huh?

In my case I have even less time since I work more than 40 hours every week. I average around 4 hours of me time every day. See why these hours are worth a lot to me? I work about 47 hours a week, almost a full extra day of work than the average person.

When you run the numbers like this less than 20% of your day actually belongs to you. I end up with about 16% of my time being mine. And Honestly, most days I’m so tired I just come home and veg in front of the T.V. When the weekend does roll around we’re at open houses, meals out, yard work, doing laundry/dishes etc.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that you own 100% of your time?
I think so.