| I always use “let's assume roughly X/hour” as a joke. You don't get paid for your spare time, except in opportunity cost. If someone applies 20 hours of their time at work, then yes, that's pocket change. If they apply 20 hours of their time at home, that's not time that they'd get paid for anyway, so the analogy is as foolish as the claim that every pirated copy of a movie would have been bought were it not for pirates. Instead, I'm choosing between 20 hours of reading a book and maybe 20 hours of watching television (for example), which costs the electricity that the television consumes (since the cable or internet is paid for already). I suspect you'll find 20 hours of TV will cost less than $29. Or maybe it's 20 hours of running over the course of a couple of weeks. That's free, except maybe for the cost of the water to rehydrate. That's probably cheaper than $29, too. If you want to do the analysis in terms of how much it will earn you in the future, that's also valid I guess. But it complicates things, since it's hard to quantify how much the relaxation you get from watching TV or destressing from running is worth. Let me just say, I don't think people should complain about the price of a good book when it's <$50-100 (depending on material). But the X/hour analogy only works if you're taking work time, and then many companies will often be willing to refund you that money anyway. Last note: this isn't $29 for a book. It's $29 for a video course (though admittedly a non-HTML version of the book is thrown in at the end). The book itself is available for free, which is all that the OP was pointing out. |
Your free time is clearly worth more than your wage/salary. If your free time were worth nothing, it would make no sense to have it. You have extra time you could get another job possibly paying up to your existing rate.
Don't like the thought of taking a second job doing what you're doing now? That's because your time is worth more to you than that cash, by definition.