Monday, October 7, 2013

Time Value of an Entrepreneur

I truly believe a great percentage of the 98% have amazing talents that have been relegated to the back burner in an effort to make money.  We've been programmed that a task of value must be weighed in currency.

So I sat down to figure just what each hour nets in our every day life.  There are 168 hours in a week..How does that divide out for the average wage earner?  I have discovered so many things, in doing what I was created to do.  First, work doesn't feel like work at all, so I enjoy what I do and I am certainly not watching the clock waiting to time out, although I do keep an eye on the sun, as it relates to chore time.  I've gotten so engrossed in writing or had in figuring one more step or ingredient into the formula of a product that the sun was sinking pretty low, when I came to my senses . . .

Say a person makes $100.00 an hour, because I do know an individual who claims such an income, but it is by appointment and if there is no appointment, they are simply standing there by the phone making ZERO.  There are those who make $30-40 dollars an hour and many who make sizeable commissions, but regardless, there is still time in a week that they are not on the clock or time spent, leading up to that commission.  Now, I realize there are doctors and lawyers who do bill exorbitant amounts for their time, and to be real, I'm not including them in this article.  Their vast income appears, to me, to be established by their higher education to take advantage of frightened, desperate people.  Let's get back to the say $30.00 an hour pay check, which I think is probably still well above the average.

Thirty dollars an hour for 40 hours is $1200.00 a week.  In figuring, and this is only an approximate figure, the individual's take home after taxes would be just under $800.00.  Our tax system consumes at least 1/3 of most earnings in withholding.  Now to divide $800.00 by the hours in a week, it takes it down a bit more.  Say you take an hour getting ready for work each morning and driving 30 minutes to and from work, plus you are actually at the work site for 9 1/2 hours to cover a lunch hour and breaks.  That ups the time invested in the job to 57.5 hours a week which drops the take home pay to less than $14.00 an hour.

Then there is also the cost of driving to work that is not tax deductible and the time spent trying to wind down.  Without counting sleeping hours, there are still a number of hours in the evening that are simply "spent" without thought of income or value.  To translate all that to a person who is self employed or an entrepreneur.  It is up to the individual, as to how many hours count toward their business . . . usually every waking hour.  Taxes are a different matter also, in that income tax is actually paid monthly or quarterly based upon revenue. The taxes are based upon what is actually owed, not withheld to be used for a year and refunded the following year.

When a person works for themselves, they are actually investing time into their income.  When a person is on someone's time clock, forty hours of their 57.5 hours is merely compensated.  Frequently a self-employed person spends their "free time" in research and development, rather than entertainment.  Entrepreneurs have the distinct advantage of never feeling the need to "wind down!"

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