Inspired to minimise my expenditures and be more aware of my spending habits I wrote a small chrome extension.
"Pay with life" extension replaces any prices in the online stores with amount of time it would take me to earn that money. As an example, if I earn 42m per hour and pay no taxes, then a pair of new shoes that costs 42m on ebay would cost 1 hour of my time. If I do, however, pay approx %30 in taxes, the 42m shoes would cost me more than 1 hour.
This extension currently supports US dollars, GB pounds and euros. Please note that some prices might still not be converted properly.
Play around with it and let me know your thoughts! I do look forward to all the feedback ;)
I came across a research paper about 10 years ago that studied happiness across disciplines and was able to show correlation between unhappiness and professions where pay was high and hourly (eg lawyers). The paper suggested that constantly reinforcing the concept of time as money was a possible source of unhappiness.
Curious way to look at it! Do you find it helps you in preventing spending?
For me a big mental change was switching to pre-paid goal/checking-accounts for everything I need, and having big long term, aggressive goals. I do this with Simple "bank" (though I hope to find a more feature rich app to do it in the future). This helps me consistently feel "broke as hell", which has proved to be quite effective to saving. Furthermore, I plan all purchases weeks in advance and budget for everything, food, luxury, bills, etc.
I must admit that I have never applied such an approach to saving my money but it's something that I would definitely try. Thank you for sharing.
I haven't used this extension for a prolonged time yet so I cannot really say if it would prevent spending.
I have made, however, the following observations:
- For me, being a professional, most learning materials (books, courses, etc.) cost minutes of my life but I get infinite(?) value. I am happy to buy these things without a second thought now (before, I would enter analysis/paralysis mode deciding whether I need it and wasting more time on indecision)
- My dream car is approximately 10 years away of hard work (suddenly it seems to be more achievable)
- If I was a low wage worker (or student/apprentice), even the cheapest items would steal a lot of time from my life
s/42m/$20 above (replace 42m with $20). I had the extension enabled while writing the comment and, once I refreshed the page, all the prices have been replaced.
Comments
Hi all,
Inspired to minimise my expenditures and be more aware of my spending habits I wrote a small chrome extension.
"Pay with life" extension replaces any prices in the online stores with amount of time it would take me to earn that money. As an example, if I earn 42m per hour and pay no taxes, then a pair of new shoes that costs 42m on ebay would cost 1 hour of my time. If I do, however, pay approx %30 in taxes, the 42m shoes would cost me more than 1 hour.
This extension currently supports US dollars, GB pounds and euros. Please note that some prices might still not be converted properly.
Play around with it and let me know your thoughts! I do look forward to all the feedback ;)
I came across a research paper about 10 years ago that studied happiness across disciplines and was able to show correlation between unhappiness and professions where pay was high and hourly (eg lawyers). The paper suggested that constantly reinforcing the concept of time as money was a possible source of unhappiness.
Just a heads up!
Curious way to look at it! Do you find it helps you in preventing spending?
For me a big mental change was switching to pre-paid goal/checking-accounts for everything I need, and having big long term, aggressive goals. I do this with Simple "bank" (though I hope to find a more feature rich app to do it in the future). This helps me consistently feel "broke as hell", which has proved to be quite effective to saving. Furthermore, I plan all purchases weeks in advance and budget for everything, food, luxury, bills, etc.
I must admit that I have never applied such an approach to saving my money but it's something that I would definitely try. Thank you for sharing.
I haven't used this extension for a prolonged time yet so I cannot really say if it would prevent spending.
I have made, however, the following observations: - For me, being a professional, most learning materials (books, courses, etc.) cost minutes of my life but I get infinite(?) value. I am happy to buy these things without a second thought now (before, I would enter analysis/paralysis mode deciding whether I need it and wasting more time on indecision) - My dream car is approximately 10 years away of hard work (suddenly it seems to be more achievable) - If I was a low wage worker (or student/apprentice), even the cheapest items would steal a lot of time from my life
s/42m/$20 above (replace 42m with $20). I had the extension enabled while writing the comment and, once I refreshed the page, all the prices have been replaced.