Value of Time Calculator

Today I took a very interesting test. My mentor Josh suggested I take the Value of Time Calculator. He said it was a real eye opener for him so I decided to give it a try. The test asks you a series of questions like how much would you have to get paid in order to do a part time job one day a week and how long would you wait in line for to get a $100 give card etc. It was a very straight forward test and only took a few minutes to get my results!

After taking the test these were my results...

The value of an hour of your free time is $10. This means you should be willing to spend a free hour working on a neutral job (on top of your current work schedule) if you were offered this amount of money to do so. By the same token, this sum is how much you might pay to gain an additional hour of free time. We calculated this figure by finding the median of four of your answers:

• You said that you'd need $10 to take on an hour of additional work per week, which implies you value your time at $10 per hour.
• You said that you'd wait in line for 60 minutes to receive a $100 gift certificate, which implies that you're trading each hour of waiting time for $100.
• You said that you'd pay $20 for access to a machine that would let you complete a 4-hour task in 2 minutes, which implies that you'd pay $5 for each hour of free time that you free up.
• You said that you'd pay $10 extra for an express train ticket that would save you an hour of travel, which means that you'd pay $10 in exchange for one additional hour of free time.

Your consistency score is 2.05, this number reflects how consistent your self-reported money/time value is.  0 is least consistent and 10 is most consistent. I also am more inconsistent than 60% of the people who have used this tool. (Most people are at least somewhat inconsistent on this subject, so the typical consistency score is fairly low.) 

After seeing the results, the test also gave me a few suggestions for the future...

• It's possible that you're more reluctant than you should be to spend money in order to free up time — for instance, by paying for time-saving services or purchasing time-saving devices.
• If you have a chance to save 30 minutes by taking a cab instead of the bus, you might want to do so, as long as the cab costs no more than $5 more than the bus.
• If you can hire someone to do chores for you (e.g. cleaning, or laundry, or helping you move your stuff), you should consider doing so as long as they charge you less than $10 for each hour of work they take off your hands.
• If you're considering waiting in line for 20 minutes to get something free, ask yourself whether you'd be willing to pay $3.33 for that thing. If not, you probably shouldn't wait.
• If you're thinking of buying a time-saving device (e.g. a dishwasher or garlic press), estimate how many total hours it will save you. If it costs less than the number of hours it'll save you multiplied by $10, it's probably a good purchase. So for example, if it will save you 10 hours, pay no more than $100.
• If you're thinking of taking on an extra part-time job, you should probably only consider jobs that pay at least $10 per hour.
• If you're debating whether to purchase an item worth $20, you should spend much less than 120 minutes making up your mind. If you spend longer, the value of the time you've devoted to deciding whether to buy the item will exceed the value of the item itself!

This test was really interesting and accurate. It gave me some thoughts for the future that I will definitely try! Hopefully they will help. I highly recommend anyone to take this test it can help you save time and money and you learn a lot about yourself!