The Relative Value of Money

The Relative Value of Money

By Kevin From Financial Panther

There’s a concept that I’ve been thinking about over the past couple of years, especially as I’ve made this transition from a full-time, professional, real job, to a quasi-fake job as a blogger and gig economy worker. It has to do with a concept you could call the relative value of money.

When I think about what that means, it’s basically the idea that money you earn from one activity might be worth more to you personally compared to the money you earn from another activity.

In fact, it might be worth so much more to you that you’ll opt to spend your days earning money in that manner even if it means you’re making less money from an objective standpoint. This concept has really come into clearer focus to me over the past few years and I think it helps explain why I’ve made a lot of the work decisions I’ve made.

One of the weird things I’ve done consistently over the past few years is doing pretty low-level side hustles using sharing economy and gig economy apps. From an objective standpoint, it really didn’t make much sense for me to do all of this stuff.

At the peak of my lawyer career, I was making $300 or more per day from my salary, obviously more than enough to live very comfortably. And yet, even though I made all of this money, I still chose to spend my spare hours doing silly things like delivering food to people on my bike and selling stuff I found in the trash.

The common criticism I’d get was that doing this stuff was a waste of my time. The better use of my time would be to focus on my job and continue to progress in my legal career. Eventually, I could try to become a partner somewhere or just do something to continue to increase my salary, or at least to increase my prestige.

In truth, that’s probably what I should have done, at least if we’re looking at pure numbers. I could obviously make much more money as a lawyer than I could from all of the stupid things I was doing. But the few bucks I made doing my random gig stuff felt so much more valuable and rewarding to me compared to any dollar I earned from my regular paycheck.

The thing I’ve learned to value more and more is control over my life. I suspect that’s something a lot of people on the path to financial independence value too. The money I made from my day job, however, was the exact opposite of control over my life. I had to be at the office at a certain time, do things that other people told me to do, and basically, plan my life around my job. It made me feel trapped.

A dollar might have the same objective value no matter how you choose to earn it. But how you personally value that dollar is another matter. I think that’s worth thinking about.

Thinking About The Relative Value Of Money

One of the podcasts I listen to pretty regularly is Tropical MBA, which I highly recommend you listen to if you’re the entrepreneurial type looking for some help and motivation.

This quote from a recent episode basically hit on exactly what I’ve been feeling over the past few years:

Would you rather be . . . relatively “poor” and own all your time? Or have a job, make decent money, but own none of your time? I’d pick selling cars on Craigslist and making $2000 or $3000 a month living in an apartment doing whatever I want when I wake up any day, any lifetime.

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