What Are You Worth? By Jack Rudd Jr.

You don’t pay for anything with money, it doesn’t really exist. Money is only a tangible form of currency to represent the real form of payment. We pay for everything with “Hours of your life”. That’s right, think about it. When you pay your bills, aren’t you presenting paper money to pay that was given to you by a bank from an account in which your paycheck was deposited; a paycheck that was payment for hours that you worked? You don’t pay with money, you pay with your time; your minutes, your hours, your days.

 Most people now use their debit card to make purchases. As a result, no actual money changes hands, so you can translate everything into hours worked. If you make$15.oo an hour you can say that a bill of $150.00 from Comcast (that’s a more friendly number then people are used to, remember this is an example) will cost you 10 hours of work.

TIME, how important is it? Well there are whole departments much like Resource Planning or Workforce management whose sole purpose is to manage the time of a call centers, manufacturing, packaging or large workforce.  Mature companies understand that a small investment in these planners will reap huge rewards in time management and efficiency. We all know we have a limited number of days in our lives, we grow, we age and we only have a certain number of “work” days in our life.

How important is time to you? That is the question of this age. We often hear “I don’t get paid enough to do that.” however; there are people who work hard for next to nothing. If we use time to pay for everything in our lives and we translate that to money we look into “How much is your hour worth.” I would challenge: that is up to you. You have to do the math for yourself, I did some dirty math (quick math in my head using rounded and estimated numbers) and found that my hour is worth to me $29.82.

Where did I get that number? You ask, well I added my house, cost of repairs, cost of my hobbies, estimated cost of raising my children and so on for 20 years.  This is based on 40 hour week, this is my “needed” hour rate to do what I want in life. This being determined I had to ask myself: “Am I working as if I deserve $29.82 an hour?” That’s easy, no I am not. It’s something I am working on and soon I would like to say I put in that kind of day. So this is what I ask you, are you giving 100% of what you think you deserve out of life? Are you putting in enough to deserve what you make? Or do you want to be in a place that lets you live your dreams. I am not saying it’s easy and I am not saying everyone can do it, but are you trying? Are you putting forth the effort that even without the product you are working to earn what you want? If not you never will.

You can’t expect to find yourself in a position that pays you what you want to be paid to do all those things in life you want and need if you don’t act like it. Attitude and drive are missing today because people have forgotten the real value in money, it’s not about a piece of paper that you trade for the things you want, it’s about the hours of your life you gave to have that item. Is that thing you want but don’t need worth the hours you spent working for it? 

If you aren't making what you want to make are you working as if you deserve it now? My commitment to myself is to work for what like I deserve what I want to get paid. I challenge you to do the same. 

Jack Rudd Jr is a Resource Planning Professional with more than 10 years experience in contact centers.  He has a BS in Business Information Systems and resides in Maple Falls, Washington with his wife Christa and 4 children: Cara. Xander, Magnus and Dorian.  You can learn more about Jack by visiting his LinkedIn Profile.