There have been a number of data points recently that have caught me off guard. Apparently, there are people in this world who actually work 40 hours a week or less and complain why they can’t get ahead!
I understand the complaining if you are a student, have a disability, doing heavy manual labor, or are under-employed. But, I’ve only heard about places like France where people work less than 40 hours a week and start going on strike if they have to work more.
Working 40 hours a week or less is fantastic if you are happy with your income and career. Working 40 hours a week or less is also great if you are not bored out of your mind and can get away with it. Don’t let anybody else tell you to work harder.
Unfortunately, I am neither skilled enough to do what I want with that little amount of time. Nor do I have the courage to work so little for what I am being compensated for. Besides, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I had at least 50-60 hours a week of energy to work.
If you are on the younger side, you might as well utilize it before it fades. Trust me, your energy will fade eventually and you will have wished you did more while you were younger.
One of the core principles of Financial Samurai is this: Never fail due to a lack of effort because effort requires no skill.
Folks Who Complain Why They Can’t Get Ahead While Working So Little
Here are a number of data points from people who are complaining about needing to work 40 hours a week.
Data point #1
Two women on the bus were chatting next to me and explaining what a long day at work they had. It was 6:30pm and one woman said, “Thank goodness the day is over! I got in an hour early at 8:30am and am absolutely exhausted!”
She’s exhausted for being in the office for nine hours and taking an hour long lunch break? Sign me up! In equities banking, we lowly analyst had to get in at 5:30 am to run errands and print out research for our traders, and then stay until at least 7:30 pm!
Data point #2
For some reason, my article “How Much Do The Top Income Earners Make By Percentage?” continues to get random commenters (1,200+ now) who turn the simple question into a political and social debate about why the rich should be paying more taxes, and the lower 50% should be paying even less taxes.
One commenter says I’m out of touch with reality when I explain that anybody who really wants to be in the Top 50% of income earners ($33,000) can do so if they wanted to. All you have to do is work 63 hours a week at $10 to make $33,000 a year! He says that’s ridiculous as he can’t make that working 40 hours a week (no kidding).
Data point #3
My friend in HR said her firm is implementing overtime compensation for certain level of workers who work more than 40 hours a week. I asked her why her firm was rewarding their workers for working hours they’re supposed to anyway?
That’s like rewarding the cable guy who comes within the allotted window! She giggled and shrugged. If I am the CEO, and you command overtime compensation for working more than 40 hours a week, I will do my best to refer you to my competitor to blow them up.
Data point #4
A blogger who moved to a foreign country to experience location independence, swims for hours a day, “works” about 30 hours a week and says he’s burned out. He’s upset that he’s not making more than $1,000-$2,000 a month with his info-products and online job opportunities. He’s so burned out that he took a week off to re-charge his batteries. In other words, he took a vacation from his vacation.
You’d think as a full-time blogger working 3-5 hours a day that you’d probably post every day and never burn out. But, he only posts 2 to 3X a week and writes that he’s frustrated nobody has given him a book deal. Come on now. $1,000-$2,000 ain’t too shabby for kicking back!
The blogger is in his 40s now, still lives with his parents, but has finally taking hard work to heart and is producing a pretty good podcast on living unconventional lives.
At least he’s done something great by starting something creative. I highly recommend everyone start their own website and brand themselves online. Get rich off yourself. Don’t let Facebook and Twitter get rich off you!
Not a day goes by where I’m not glad I didn’t start Financial Samurai in 2009. Partially due to having something to look forward to, I was able to negotiate a severance in 2012 to build this site. Financial Samurai now makes a healthy amount of supplemental retirement income along with my other passive income streams.
Data point #5
There were four 20-something year olds just lounging in these recliners at Starbucks, surfing the web, and doing absolutely nothing but goof off for the entire 1.5 hours I was meeting up with a client. This was midday on a Wednesday.
One guy starts saying how his firm hired someone senior than him to do his job, and how angry he was for not being recognized more. Then this other guy who was listening to music off his laptop chimes in that he’s been looking for a programming job for months.
This is San Francisco, where if you have programming skills, you are hired for $120,000 at 22 years old. Watching YouTube videos, surfing the web, and playing games on your laptop at a coffee shop during the middle of the day does not get you anywhere. Taking 1.25 hour coffee breaks in the afternoon if you are working doesn’t not help you get promoted either.
Below is the average number of hours worked per week in the U.S. Talk about living the dream!
Data point #6
After publishing the post, Are You Too Proud to Be Rich?, a lot of people complained in the comments section they don’t have the capacity to side hustle to make extra money. It’s as if once the clock strikes 5 pm, no more work can be done.
Meanwhile, I just wrote that all these first generation immigrants side-hustling and making more than these private school graduate Uber employees! Why wouldn’t you want to start your own website to try and leverage the internet to make more money? There are millions of people out there who are making extra money via the gig economy and online.
Data point #7
In an open letter to her CEO, 24 year old Talia wrote, “I was told I’d have to work in support for an entire year before I would be able to move to a different department. A whole year answering calls and talking to customers just for the hope that someday I’d be able to make memes and twitter jokes about food.”
WTF. Since when was working an “entire year” so bad before getting a promotion?
Data point #8
Bo, a Creative Writing/English major from University of Colorado said he and other people were crying at their desks constantly while working for Amazon, according to a New York Times article.
Bo lasted for 1 year, 10 months at his book marketing role so he could do something more special, like work at a startup called Yessler. He lasted for 1 year and 6 months before moving to Microsoft, where he’s been there for 8 months. Will he ever be able to last for two years at one place? Or will things just be too hard on him?
Data point #8
Finally, let me update this post and share my own example. When the pandemic started, I told myself that I might as well try and make more money online given we were locked down. As a result, I spent many more hours a week writing and doing business development on Financial Samurai.
However, I no longer want to work 40 hours a week trying to make money online. This pandemic has truly beaten me up mentally and physically as a father of two young children.
I would love to earn more money and work less than 40 hours a week so I can spend more time with my children. I’m considering going back to work since people are making more money and more people get to work from home.
However, since I’ve been used to total freedom since I left finance in 2012, I don’t want to work for someone anymore. Instead, I’ll just focus on building up more passive retirement income. Therefore, I’ve got to learn to be satisfied with what we’ve got.
Do People Really Work Less Than 40 Hours A Week And Complain?
Are there really people out there who only work 40 hours or less a week and complain why they can’t get ahead or make enough money? That’s like slacking off in school and expecting to go straight to the corner office. Ain’t gonna happen.
I don’t think I’ve ever worked less than 40 hours a week when I was still working a day job and healthy. Day job work is around 55-60 hours a week and online work is another 20 hours of side hustle work for a total of 75-80 hours.
Add on 35-42 hours a week for sleep, that still leaves 50 hours a week to spend with family, friends, and extracurricular activities.
It’s not like the 75-80 hours a week spent on work is all work either. It’s fun to interact online, go play golf with clients, get some lunch and earn some income in the process.
Perhaps society has manipulated people into believing that 40 hours a week is a normal time to spend on the job or on an endeavor.
Two Ways To Get Ahead
There are two ways to get ahead: 1) Work harder and smarter than everybody else and 2) Make everybody else work less and dumber. If you ask any super successful person how many hours a week they work I can guarantee you that it’s way more than 40 hours a week.
Do you think the POTUS works only 40 hours a week? Hell no! They regularly work 60-70 hours a week and are on call 24-7. Do you think Fake News King Mark Zuckerberg works 40 hours a week? He worked around the clock to build Facebook to what it is today. Do you think doctors don’t study night and day for their MCATs to then go on single digit work hour rounds? The answer is “no,” and you all know that.
Stop being so lazy and abolish welfare mentality! We’ve got an immigrant janitor here in San Francisco who makes $271,000 a year due to working tons of overtime. He’s not alone either!
His elevator/escalator technician makes $284,000 a year due to working way more than 40 hours a week as well. He’s not alone either! Managers at In N’ Out Burger earn on average $160,000 a year without a college degree.
The list goes on and on about people who work more than 40 hours a week in regular jobs and make handsome six-figure salaries.
Working 40 Hours A Week Is A Walk In The Park
If you can work 40 hours a week and be satisfied with what you have, more power to you. However, if you are complaining about life and why you don’t have enough money and only work 40 hours a week, you need to get your head checked.
We live in a very competitive society and anybody who wants to be better than average can’t work 40 hours and expect to be more than they’re not.
I had originally wrote this post before I had retired. Now that I’m almost 10 years into retirement, I finally see the joys of slacking off.
I’ve only been “working” ~20 hours a week on average since I left work in 2012. But I jacked up my work hours to 35-40 hours a week during the lockdowns because I figured I might as well make money.
Trust me, you won’t regret the effort you put in when you were younger. Not a day goes by where I’m not thankful to be able to spend every day taking care of my family, instead of having to commute to an office and work at a job that I don’t love.
With Joe Biden as President, more of us should be able to relax given taxes will be going up to pay for a bigger safety net. I’m ready to take it down a notch again after an exhausting couple years during the pandemic.
Maybe, soon, we really do deserve to get ahead while working 40 hours a week or less!
Negotiate A Severance And Leave If You’re Miserable
In 2012, I negotiated a six-figure severance package worth six years of living expenses. It was my catalyst to break free from Corporate America for good. I didn’t want to deal with a micromanager anymore. As an employee, you have more power than you think.
If you quit your job, you forfeit your right to a severance, to unemployment benefits, and to COBRA healthcare. Check out my book, How To Engineer Your Layoff. It will teach you how to leave your job with potentially money in your pocket.
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Invest In Real Estate For Passive Income If You Want To Work Less
If you’re sick of working so many hours, then you should invest in real estate for passive income. Let real estate do the heavy lifting for you so you don’t have to work as hard. Real estate is my favorite way to achieving financial freedom because it is a tangible asset that is less volatile, provides utility, and generates income.
By the time I was 30, I had bought two properties in San Francisco and one property in Lake Tahoe. These properties generated enough income to help me escape work in 2012.
Then in 2016, I started diversifying into heartland real estate to take advantage of lower valuations and higher cap rates. I did so by investing $810,000 with real estate crowdfunding platforms. With interest rates down, the value of cash flow is up.
Take a look at my two favorite real estate crowdfunding platforms. Both are free to sign up and explore.
Fundrise: A way for accredited and non-accredited investors to diversify into real estate through private eFunds. Fundrise has been around since 2012 and has consistently generated steady returns, no matter what the stock market is doing. For most people, investing in a diversified eREIT is the way to go.
CrowdStreet: A way for accredited investors to invest in individual real estate opportunities mostly in 18-hour cities. 18-hour cities are secondary cities with lower valuations and higher rental yields. If you have a lot more capital, you can build you own diversified realestate portfolio.
Start Your Own Business / Website
If you feel you’re not getting paid what you’re worth and want to boost your income, start your own business online on the side! It used to cost a fortune and a lot of employees to start your business. Now you can start it for next to nothing.
Brand yourself online, connect with like-minded people, find new consulting gigs, and potentially make a good amount of income online one day by selling your product or recommending other great products.
Not a day goes by where I’m not thankful for starting Financial Samurai in 2009. Here’s my step-by-step guide to for how to start your own website like mine in under 30 minutes.
Just know that at least in the beginning, running your own business will require way more than 40 hours a week to get ahead. The good thing is, you’ll enjoy the work more because it’s yours!
Manage Your Finances In One Place
Finally, get a handle on your finances by signing up with Personal Capital. It is a free online platform which aggregates all your financial accounts in one place. The more you can track your finances, the better you can optimize.
Before Personal Capital, I had to log into eight different systems to track 28 different accounts to track my finances. Now, I can just log into Personal Capital to see how my stock accounts are doing. I can also check how my net worth is progressing.
The best feature is their free 401K Fee Analyzer. It is now saving me over $1,700 a year in portfolio fees I had no idea I was paying! They also launched their amazing Retirement Planning Calculator. It uses your real data to give you great insights into your financial future.
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The funny thing about the pandemic is that some who’ve been able to work from home are able to work less and still get paid the same. Now that’s working smarter! Just make sure your company doesn’t catch you slacking off too much! Related post: In Search For The 2-Hour Work Day While Getting Paid Full Time
There’s so much wrong with this I can’t even begin to start but I’ll take one little gem. Your adding on hours in the week is interesting. When I saw “35 to 42 hours a week for sleep” I though maybe you were only including 5 working days. That’s impossible though because you said work 75 to 80 hours a week and there are only 120 hours in 5 days. So you meant 7 days. Are you suggesting people sleep 5 to 6 hours a night? That would cause sleep deprivation because the recommendation is 7 to 9 hours a night. That’s not even the best part you said “that still leaves 50 hours a week to spend with family, friends, and extracurricular activities”. Did you forget about eating, bathing, brushing teeth, commuting, grocery shopping, managing finances, housework, picking up various the many things you need, going to the bathroom, getting your haircut every once in a while, appointments such doctor or dentist, cooking, getting gas or car maintenance, cushion time in case of emergencies, etc.? The various things one has to do throughout the week add up fast. I’ve had to manage my time down to the minute because of school. Those “extra” hours disappear fast. Talk to a doctor in residency that works 90 hours a week. By your calculations they should have lots of time but they don’t even have enough to get more than 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night and they never see their family. You couldn’t make it anymore obvious you’ve never tried to work that much yourself.
I’m suggesting people spread some work into Saturday and Sunday to even the load. Saturday and Sunday are manufactured days of rest. They are arbitrary.
I frequently work 2-3 hours on a Sunday so I don’t have to deal with a Monday rush. It’s much more relaxing.
I also encourage folks to take naps after lunch to follow their body’s rhythm.
The key to this post is “do people work 40 hours a week or less and COMPLAIN why they can’t get ahead.”
If nobody is complaining, all good!
Related: Be The Top 1% In Something, Anything For A Better Life
That just how ignorant people can be. It’s really not a surprise at all… I work everyday an have for enough time to say I cant remember my last vacation. I’m working 3 jobs doesnt matter what day it is I’m at work. I have a degree but that’s just meaningless now that im out of school being 35 no company gives a shit about your degree it’s all about money and wages they dont have to pay an overqualified employee so I make due. That’s life right… well I cant wait for the day I crash my car into some ignorant politician that’s skating by in his $150k vehicle from sleep deprivation… in all my years of living my life theres not 1 thing in this world I hate more than money/credit in this failing economy. I work way more than any average you have yet I can barely sustain anything I own or even have food in my fridge, not to mention gas. I make too much for any type of assistance yet I dont make enough to take a loan out. How dafuq does that make sense. Now here I am stuck in traffic going to my 2nd job watching my car devoure the minuscule amount of money I make for wages in this economy. All I can say is “If you struggle and try hard enough and start from the bottom, Your bound to end up on the bottom”. As flawed as it sounds I’ve yet to see any end to my day to day lifes struggle to stay on top of anything financially related….
If you’re working 3 jobs and can’t afford to have food in the fridge then you are spending money on unnecessary items or you are working very little hours for each job.
This is what makes this country a SICK place to live, NOBODY should be working 3 jobs to get by. That is being OVERWORKED what needs to happen is for wages to go up for everybody, including the ones that have worked at a place for 20, 30 40 years you name it. I am so sick of the companies or employers ripping off the worker every frickin day, week or year. We all need to let our voices be heard and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. A bill needs to be passed that all employers and companies to give out paid vacations, sick pay and holiday pay and it is mandatory for employees to use them. The work force in this country needs to CHANGE NOW
Nobody needs to be working 3 jobs what needs to happen is wages to be raised and less hours worked
This is the most painfully absurd bullshit I’ve ever seen.
Not at all Facts are facts
Normally I love reading articles on Financial Samurai, there’s a lot to be learned when it comes to finance and I’m grateful for blogs such as this one because you typically offer good advice for free to readers. That being said, this post completely blows past the reality of labor in this country.
For starters, you’re assuming that most people live an otherwise stable life and that we have reserves of energy left over each day to do more work. Well, this is not the case, people literally don’t have the energy, a lot of jobs require a hugh calorie output. Assuming a weight of 160lbs (average between men and women), working at a desk job will burn about 130 calories per hour. Laying around the house you burn 80-100 calories so a desk job is not very intensive physical work. That’s not so bad and it’s certainly reasonable to assume people can push themselves a bit more if they have the mental fortitude to push themselves, but the argument doesn’t hold up when the jobs are labor intensive.
Jobs that require moderate activity like fast food work, police patroling, and janitorial work burn in the area of 200-250 calories in an hour. You could say these people are working 3x harder than if they were laying in bed.
Now we can start talking about real physical work. Construction workers burn about 300 calories per hour. If you own a lanscaping and snow removal company you’re likely to burn about 400 calories per hour. If you are in mining or metal smealting you can be burning upwards of 500 calories per hour. The same goes for firefighters when actively fighting a blaze. And at the top of the list is logging. A lumberjack can burn 10 calories per minute, 600 per hour and 8,000 calories in a shift.
The reason I use calories burned is because unlike money and education, calories burned is directly correlated with work intensity and duration. You have people putting in 60hrs a week in an office making 200k a year and you have construction workers doing the same and making 50k per year. So yes, for low intensity work it’s easy to tell people to work longer. But for people that have high intensity work or long duration work, telling those people to work more is insulting. You simply can’t eat enough food in a day to work like a logger, and you certainly can’t expect the majority of the workforce to put in more hours because then they’d be working themselves into an early grave. And it would be terriblje to tell that firefighter (many of whom are volunteers, BTW) to quit and start a side business online. There are a lot of people whose work is necessary.
So why do some people work less than 40hrs a week and then complain? Because the job they are in does not pay well, doesn’t offer growth, and has few benefits. If you are in fast food, your job growth potential is next to zero. McDonald’s claims to have employed 1 in 8 American workers in it’s history, but currently they employ 400,000 workers. So only a small percentage of works ever managed to climb the ladder at McDonald’s, everyone else had to go elsewhere to make a living wage. These companies often resort to cruel tactics to keep people at their company.
At Albertsons my schedule changed every week and I’d find out the schedule for the following week on Friday afternoons, so 36 hours advance notice. That was store policy because people couldn’t make plans ouside of work, so that kept everyone’s schedules free to cover shifts that didn’t get filled. Try going to college while working a full time job that has inconsistent schedules. The choice was to either quit (and not get employed because employers hate college student schedules) or suck it up and hope my boss is gracious enough to let me go to class (she was). And then there are unions. Did you know that there are unions for food workers? Through the union I got a $1 per hour wage increase, but I had to shell out $80 per month in union dues. The only benefit was a reduced rate on company health insurance.
Speaking of insurance, a lot of places, including universities, fast food, and chain stores limit worker hours to lock people out of full time benefits. At Albertsons you had to maintain an average 30 hours or more per week every quarter to qualify for insurance. So basically I had to work full time while attending classes or else I wouldn’t have insurance.
Then consider non-work related activities. People need to sleep and typically don’t get enough, people need to eat and typically don’t know what’s healthy and what’s not, and people typically have families to take care off. Childcare in particular is expensive and time consuming. A child will cost about 1 million dollars from the time of conception to college. Sure, you can cut corners here and there but there’s no way around kids being a big expense. Having one kid is not easy, but add one or two more and keeping them fed, clothed, sheltered, healthy, and happy is draining.
Guys typically have no clue. If you replaced your wife with a nanny, there’s no way in hell most people could afford the expense, even if it was for a couple weeks so the wife could take a vacation or start a side hustle on the Internet. Oh yeah, and nannies (ie, substitute parents) don’t get paid enough anyways. Mothers work a physically, mentaily, and emotionally draining job that doesn’t pay a dime, offers no benefits, and very often there is no support from inside or outside the family.
In contrast, golf is not work, it’s a hobby. The fact is most business deals are made in an office, not on a golf course. If you regularly make sales at a country club, your clientel is narrow and out of touch. I golf occasionally too, golf is 80% middle aged white men that are rich enough to afford menbership. The national demographic of workers, clients, and employers is far more diverse than what you find on the driving range.
So to sum this all up, people physically working 8x harder than average, people who are purposefully cut out of full time employment and benefits, people who are underpaid, and people who have responsibilities outside work are all complaining that they can’t get ahead. And guess what? They have a right to complain. Most workers are underappreciated and abused by employers, customers, and our government. 70% of people don’t like their job, even though most of their positions are necessary and vital to the country. I’m sure 95% of people would like to spend more time with family and friends.
Telling people to work harder is absolutely ridiculous when most people are already at their limit. The 40hr work week was established because 1) that’s the limit an assembly line worker can be on the job and give maximum productivity, and 2) workers in the 1920s unionized and demanded consistent moderate work weeks that paid a living wage. The weekends and evenings are supposed to be for personal projects and family, its a shame that our soceity demands 24/7 attention from everyone who works a service job.
What is needed is a restructuring of our economy and society around new values, not demands to work harder and longer. People know how much money is enough to live a decent and comfortable life, we just need to find ways to change the national employment situation. I personally put family ahead of profit. If I’m lucky enough to have a wife and children, I’ll love them more than any paycheck. That also means I won’t throw my life away on an 80 hour work week for a few extra dollars. Elon Musk barely sees his family, if that’s what success looks like then we need to redifine success. I don’t look up to the ultra rich, I pity them. A fishing line and a good family brings more happiness than all the money in the world.
But that doesn’t mean I or anyone else has to keep their mouths shut when all the jobs in the country pay 12 per hour or 120 per hour. The majority of job growth in this country since 2008 has been less than $15 per hour. That might be passable in a rural community, but 90% of the population lives in a city. The only saving grace has been the Internet which has allowed some people to make money, but the majority need and demand an actual, physical job that pays a living wage.
So, if this post was intended for that 20-something taking a 1.5 hour coffee break, fine, those people can suck it up and work more. But speaking for the other 99% of the workforce that does their job and recieves very little in return, get bent. We work hard and what we ask is decent pay and benefits for our families. If employers are unwilling to do that, then they need to change, not the workers.
All great points. I wrote this post a long time ago to motivate myself to work harder because I wanted to retire early and be free.
Check out this pose where I talk about a janitor and an electrician making over $250,000 a year. Now these guys are hustling!
https://www.financialsamurai.com/abolish-welfare-mentality-six-figure-bart-janitor/
I work 40 or less hours a week and make $100,000. All my work gets done and I’m on top of my projects. I work in IT.
IMO if you stay completely organized and make your deliverables and then some then you’re doing your job. I never agreed with the notion that more hours = hard worker. I know people who work way more hours and waste so much time or simply arent competent. Why should I put in as much time as them when I can do their work in half the time?
Bottom line: work smarter not harder.
^ THIS!!!!!
I went to college and got a Petroleum/Chemical Engineering degree at a large university. Got a bunch of student loans, and the job search for a job with decent pay after college was a wake up. I worked in the pipelines/well pads for awhile because job searching wasn’t going the best but the lifestyle in oil and gas wasn’t for me. 70+ hours a week away from family and out of town working in hotels for months. Oil and gas job was not engineering level because I lacked the 3-5 years experience for a engineer position in that field. Once my laborer crew/union got laid of I went to job searching again, which took forever and was very stressful. I was getting several interviews but always lacking experience and other qualifications. Finally got a job working on salary in a lab at a plant an hour away from where I grew up. I needed a dependable vehicle to get to plant where I work because old vehicle was up to 300k + miles. About a 1 hour commute and making 10k to 15k less than laborer in oil and gas, but the only real plus to new job is getting off weekends. I cannot afford to move out of my parents house yet, because of student loan, automobile, insurance, and medical debts from accident. After my two monthly pay checks I have about 500-700$ left over after bills; amount leftover depends on what gas costs, food, and other luxuries I spend money on that month. At this rate I will be stuck at my moms house till I am probably 30, and I am 24 now. Definitely want to move out of state later on, but can never save as much money as I want because of other expenses in life. Such as weddings, visiting family, maintenance, hobbies, vacation, etc.
Health wise I try and go to gym or do some other forms of physical activity, busy as ever on weekends. Golfing, fishing, hunting, playing instruments, kayaking, concerts, weddings, etc.
“I’m just another number in this big world, and a typical Millennial out here trying to make it”
For all the people out there working in 40 hours a week I understand if you’re making good money. For all those working more than 40 hours a week I understand if you’re making that money. I personally work a hundred hours a week and make less than 30,000 a year it’s driving me insane and I can’t find any recourse. I’ve read it a couple of articles on his web page and everything suggested starts with an impossible amount of startup capital. Whether that capital is in the form of money for time neither which I have. I don’t understand how hundreds of hours of dedicated work just go completely unnoticed. This isn’t that early 2000s working hard to get ahead is a thing anymore. You work this hard and you make ends meet that’s all.
that cant be right. you’d have to be making less than minium wage where i work cause anything over 40 hours is considered time and a half and making 7.25 an hour and working 40 hours a week gets you 290 a week plus your time and a half at 10.88 for 60 hours gets you around 660 a week.
lets say you get paid weekly so you’d be making around 3,771 a month or 45,254 dollars a year.
You forgot about taxes and not every minimum wage job gives time an a half or allows for over time
At less than 30k/year, you’re not really paying any taxes.
That is true. And if you can make that income through long term capital gains and dividends, even better!
The workforce in this country is sick and disgusting. NOBODY should be working 40, 60 or 80 hours every week. That is being overworked and causes major health problems. What needs to happen is people work less hours while raising pay. Plus it needs to be mandatory all across the board that ALL business and employers give paid vacations and holidays to part time and full timers. I work part time and proud of it. I will never ever work full time ever
Not “raising pay” but LOWERING COSTS! The government has to raise the value of our Buck therefore lowering costs!
(I know that’s what you meant)
Robin
I work at an ABA company. We only require a high school diploma to get an entry level position. We start at 12 dollars an hour which I know isn’t a lot but we’re trying to raise our starting wage and you are only making 6 dollars an hour in your current position. I recommend Center for Autism and Related Disorders. They have 230 offices in 33 states and they are always hiring.
I work 40h/week my income is good. I would never accept a job where I have to work more. (Actually I will try to find something where I work less even if I get less money)
I can not understand how you think differently. If you work more than that basically you live for working. What is the point of living like that? The only reason to work is to earn money you can spend the time you are not working. If you spend all your time working what is that work for? For me that life doesn’t worth it.
Bingo. So long as you’re happy with your work and your finances, that’s all that matters.
I retired in 2012 and have been spending about 25 hours a week on this site bc I love it. Work to live!
Nobody should have to work more than 40 hours a week to afford a decent standard of living. 40 hours a week should be able to comfortably pay for rent, food, clothing, etc., and allow people to save up for retirement at 65-70.
If I want to work only 40 hours a week so I can spend the rest of my time with friends, family, hobbies, etc., like I saw my parents do growing up, I should be able to without being in danger of not having enough money to cover my basic needs. Having to work 60+ hours a week and sacrifice my life just to buy food and shelter, let alone luxuries? That ain’t gonna fly with me.
Now, having extras and luxuries? Or choosing to retire early? THAT requires more than 40 hours a week, OR a better-paying 40 hour a week job. But then it’s a choice, and not about survival/basic needs.
Basically, I shouldn’t have to resign myself to a mediocre, paycheck to paycheck quality of life just because I want to work less and enjoy my life instead of working my life away.
So you think that you should be able to put in less time and get the same reward? If you want more money, you work more. What he’s suggesting isn’t a new idea. Ask Mark Cuban, Elon Musk, etcetera. How can you possibly say you want more if you’re not willing to work more? Now I’m not saying working more is for everyone, it’s not. But that’s what makes it valuable. I’ve broken 100 hours in a work week multiple times because I want the money and those paychecks are quite good for a job I’m only taking to pay classes. I decided I wanted to make more money so I took a job that has tough physical labor and as a result pays an extra dollar an hour. If you want to relax more, that’s cool, I get that; who doesn’t want to do what they want to do as often as possible? But if you want more money the easiest way to do that is working more, never stopping the grind.
Good to know the solution to making a barely stable living is to be a wage slave. We do more than double the work of previous generations thanks to computational tech, yet get compensated the same or less. The rich don’t work more, they just have a monopoly on production, and use that monopoly to steal more from the working class (you know, the people who ACTUALLY work for a living).
If you’re thinking “well I hustle more than everyone else, and that’s why I’m financially secure,” it’s not and you’re wrong. Even the highest caliber of experts can’t focus for more than 4 hours on a cognitively demanding job; that’s not a personal or moral failing, it’s a biological hard limit. Go read “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. Everything after 4 hours is low-value work, so I sincerely disbelieve any sentiment that claims financial security is strongly correlated with work ethic. The only way to get ahead is by owning things – either charging rent, or taking the excess value of your employees and compensating them with a fraction of that value.
Thoughts on taking action to own things?
Related: https://www.financialsamurai.com/to-get-ahead-choose-production-over-talent-every-single-time/
I lived in Europe the wages are much higher hourly sometimes 3 times higher for equivalent work back in the states and the cost of living in Europe overall is lower . Social benefits and safety nets such as paid sick leave , 60 paid days off a year , weekends off , child care benefits , nursing insurance , legal insurance, free college tuition , healthcare 100% coverage , co determination, worker cooperatives, unions , public funded elections , cooperative housing mixed with govt and private sector housing , etc,etc . It’s a joke to even compare the quality of life in Europe vs America unless your in the top 10% socioeconomically your quality of life is lower in the USA vs Europe even after the economic crisis still most of the framework is in tact in Europe and the American media keeps the mushrooms in the dark and fed shit . The USA is also the largest debtor nation and Europe the largest creditor so everything the American mushrooms have been fed really is dung
i dont know why but ever since I started doing 6 – 7 day weeks on 4 – 7 hours of sleep maximum a night my lifes been changing around. I feel like my hard work is paying off. companies are contacting me after they find my resume on indeed even if im not applying directly. I only work in security. but the fact that I feel like the last several years of struggle is paying off and now moderately okay employers are seeking me out is an amazing feeling.
MOST people, not some, MOST people work to pay their rent. They work to pay their bills, feed their children, and survive. That’s most people. So most people aren’t working to fulfill their financial dreams. They’re just simply not. That’s the world we live in today. That not getting anywhere is not complaints made of life treating them badly. It’s probably more attributed to the fact that they are too deep to get out of their situation.
I work 40 hours per week. Sometimes as much as 41 hours per week. I have an IT job, work at home, and I make about $78,000 / year.
To all the people who say they’re working 60+ hours, I don’t know what you’re doing but it really sounds like you’re just bending over for your employers. That kind of time spent on a normal basis is completely unreasonable.
I’ve talked to someone who worked 60 hour weeks for several years. They said that looking back now it was a bad idea. Nobody actually appreciated their hard work enough and they regret every day of it.
Yes, it is possible to earn a good living and not work horrendous amounts of unpaid overtime.
They could be working 20 hours a week on their side hustle in order to build passive income to retire earlier.
Thats been me, working 50-60 hours a week for a couple years now and im done with it.
I think it depends personally I think if you do too much your work level suffers. I had an ex boyfriend who would call me lazy because I was only working 40 hours a week and worrying about out relationship. I was working a rotational job that would looked good on my resume at my company. I got the rotation because I worked hard last job. In the harder job I found there was such thing as to much. He worked twice as much as me and only made six thousand more I am not sure who was the stupid one it wasn’t me.
I actually am working on some educational stuff to me up. But honestly working 80 hours a week isn’t work to to me I want a family. I made 54k this year that’s not a bad salary and it’s great for family life.
I do want to move up make some more and I am working towards that but not 80 hours not worth it.
40 hours is an average work week, in my opinion… Personally, I do not want to work less than 40 per week. I don’t want to miss out on actual life and health by being a workaholic either… And aside from the “day job” (a career that I really enjoyed when I was working), I do other creative work at times. It is not really a money maker at this point, but I enjoy the process and improving at it. I’ve tried to market that work and make it a little more profitable. Not my strength area, I must admit. It is harder to market ones own work for some reason. I’ve nearly almost worked full time (40 hours) and occasionally signed up for overtime. Once though, I worked in a mandatory OT place. That was not good. I was never alert, never felt healthy. That was 65 on an easy week, often more, for nearly a year, walking, lifting, etc. Even working at a desk, some days after 8 maybe 9 hours? You hit a wall and are not as productive. Though some days you really get involved in something and easily knock out 10 or more hours… or there’s a deadline to meet.
Someone did mention kids. What about cooking, cleaning, yard work, etc? Is that not also work? It does consume time. I could see 40 hours plus a lot of housework being a reasonable limit. I’d prefer to work 40 on average in my daytime role- with willingness to put in extra time here and there when needed. I feel that if my workflows are efficient and I do not do redundant work? A normal day should be accomplishable in 8 hours, and occasionally a little extra required for events, and other as needed work.
I am interested in how some of you are able to make the “internet business” work. Not long ago I had a great job that was aligned perfectly with my career goals, but the company was always short on funds. I was hired for a full time job, then my hours scaled back to 32 a week after only 3 months- meaning my health insurance cut and also income cut.. I tried to start a “side hustle” to make it through that time. The potential clients were willing to pay less than my materials cost. Within two months though, I was back to full time hours. Until another year or so. Then again, I was not. I was first offered to keep the position on a very part time basis (10-15 hours/week no benefits). That wouldn’t pay my bills, was simply not going to balance with a second full time role and I was up front about my intention to attempt to find a 30-35 hour position or flex time position, but that if I found a full time I’d have to take it. Came in expecting to start my part time schedule one day and? Position eliminated. AND- my attempt to start the side hustle was still online and known about, so I looked like a “flight risk” candidate who would work for maybe a year until I could go it alone. Not at all the case- but there were 50 other candidates WITHOUT a web site. I did find a very short term position. Then a role that was ok but not my ideal role, but was with a great group of people- the salary was just a liiitttle under my break even, and I took a second RELAVENT job for a bit. Which is a doozy to explain to those who are accustomed to full-time roles at more established companies where a second job is not feasible or even allowed. long story short that great group company was also tight on funding and I was downsized.
THEN the unemployment. The UNSHAKABLE unemployment.
I’d collected for 1-2 weeks before, during transitions. “I’ll find something soon” I thought. But maybe I’ll try alternate work as well- found some business leads online, took a stab at it, but the leads did not get results. The company/person offering them got secretive when one lead did get a spark of interest. I didn’t have more money to invest in advertising, dropped it, continued to search even harder for regular work…. I’d intended to maybe find a new job and maintain a very small side workload. Started to notice comments online about my “fictitious business” (not a success, but a genuine effort) and my job search was slower than any time before…. And? I’ve applied to nearly 500 positions in the past 8 months.
I’ve been getting interviews, more recently than at first… about 40 of them. But no offer. All feedback is pretty positive, always “hard choice. we found that perfect fit. filled internally. underqualified. overqualified. good luck”. I’ve widened my commute range, widened my search to include other roles, and considered unrelated and temp work. I found a very short term project. That ended. Have done some volunteering. And keep trying. ugh. I HATE being in financial doldrums. And I LOATHE not working. I spend usually 7-10 hours a day sending out applications/interviewing. Never before has it taken me more than 3 or 4 interviews to land something. Interviews used to be “what are your skills, what can you do for us, how would you…”. But now, I’m getting almost 3 or 4 a week, and they are about “so why did you take that job, why did you leave that job, why would you want THIS job… ummmm we will let you know”
Thank you for the motivation to take another stab at independent home based work. Any ideas? I don’t want to partner with any of these online “business opportunities”, just to figure out what I can provide with my own time, intellect, and skills and how to find the people who will pay for the service. I do NOT have funds to invest in a franchise or “coaching” or merchandise. I am hungry and I need to pay bills. Ideally would be something that I can maintain for a few hours a week on top of a 40 or so hour day job when I find one. This pecking away, then driving and meeting and waiting for zero income while spending on gas money is the pits!
If you want to work your life away go ahead. Not me. There are better ways my friend. I believe in work but I have discovered ways to earn an honest living in less time than the average American. I suggest you read the 4 hour work week by Tim Farris. God bless you.
although Sam leaves out a TON of ways working more hours, hustling more, drive, ambition, asking for more responsibility, etc, still leads to jack squat for most people, i get his point.
Here’s my life…i’ve only earned more than $45k a one-handful of years. most have been at about the $35k level. Why?…i’ve never given a damn about money, success, status, etc AND i’ve always been extremely cheap. Hell, i’ve probably spent more on shots at bars with my buddies than any stuff i’ve purchased. (and totally worth it! good stories to share with old friends when we get together).
Yet at 43 yrs old, I’ve still managed to I have a house to myself, a mortgage of only $400, and ZERO other debts. Hell, i could get a roommate and pay for ALL of my housing cost.
Could I have earned more in life? Sure. Have I avoided promotions and more responsibility at various jobs because i wasn’t interested in putting in the effort? Sure. Could I have side hustled at times to make more money? Sure. But I choose NOT to do these things. Unless you do something profoundly meaningful and special at your job (which, lets be honest, most don’t) work is stupid, pointless, and only serves to make someone else richer.
I chose the lifestyle i wanted (easy going, low stress, inexpensive living) and that’s given me the freedom to walk away from any job any time i want and not lose a minutes sleep over it. Yet i still have very affordable housing, IRA, 401k, HSA, and other investments.
My point is…i don’t complain because I chose the lifestyle i wanted and then found jobs that provide for it…not the max amt of money i could possibly make.
1 major caveat to my story though…i don’t have kids….the single LARGEST drain on one’s income there is.
You are so right. Jobs, especially today, are just making someone else rich off of receiving crap wages. Work for yourself, OR, invest in as many things as you can do when your 40, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.
Found this article after some disconnect with my sister- I work at a franchise my boyfriend owns. We work 60-70 hours a week and never ever have weekends off. She gets upset with me when I choose being with our staff on our busiest day over a party at her place 2 hours away. She hates that she works 40 hours a week now instead of 30 (she didn’t make enough working just 30) and doesnt understand how I like working hard. I was hoping to find a way to express to her that this is important to me and I like working but instead I just found others sharing in my frustration!
‘The only difference between successful people and those who aren’t is the willingness to work very, very hard.’
You are being overworked working those insane hours every week
I am sure someone has already noted this, but working a higher number hours of week, especially over long periods of time, is associated with a wide variety of health conditions. You are significantly more likely to die past a certain number of hours. I imagine the financial benefits don’t pan out when you consider the brevity of your life, as well as the debt you’ll likely be in as a part of the health care system we have.
Plus, beyond making a certain amount, working anymore Seriously retracts from your well-being. If you are not making enough to be anywhere close to that amount, you may find it actually costs you money to work more (babysitter, daycare), not even considering the emotional consequences of constantly having your children with sitters.
I think this post is a bit short-sighted and definitely reflects American values such as the glorification of the pursuit of busyness and money, as well as thinking that everyone fending for themselves will result in greater success if they just try harder…. without considering the many other circumstances of their lives…
This is not to say working extended hours short-term couldn’t be of benefit. Personally, I’ve found I’ve regretted the years i basically spent just working and sleeping. Didn’t get me anywhere in comparison to an overall shift in values and financial education.
Kinda sucks not gunna say where I work but they try to keep everyone part time with everyone max of 35 hours I work at a grocery store not gunna say where but I needed extra time to get my truck done I’m a stocker so it would have benefited if were ever over by 5 minutes it’s a huge deal because of corporate it’s crazy and you want full time you have to works there for years like 20 plus and take all these tests to be full time and I work in a freaking grocery store nothing that serious a grocery store lol would love the extra hours but your just not allowed they put a sheet up with everyone’s name near the clock out saying how much there over I was over by 2 minutes 2! God forbid I worked two extra minutes for that 1 cent haha crazy but it is how it is
Keep up the good work!
You can never get any time back. So, time is not money. Time is worth more than money.
How much more?
Every situation is unique so it does depend. However, when you got the time to work yet do nothing about it for 3 years making what equates to working 25 hours of work a week yet barely make ends meet you really need a wake up call. I know someone like that and it is baffling. But I can understand, it becomes a habit to want to sit around at home and relax but there are priorities in life that need to be met first.
There was a video on Burgerville workers who talked about not getting by yet were working 26 hours a week (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Jq7V-SstU). Sure, if you are fine with the life you have, 26 hours can be great. But if you are struggling to get by, another avenue of income needs to taken or live with roommates or parents. As it stands, the only way you can get 30% of housing expenses is by living with another person. A single person would be spending at least 60% if not 70% if renting alone.
Good luck trying to do that 80 hour workweek and keeping your family sane. One of the two of you is going to have to cut back working hours when you have kids. Or you’ll end up paying through the nose in alimony and child support when your wife kicks you out since she is doing a full time job plus taking care of everything for the kid(s) – daycare usually closes at 6 PM, and nannies cost nearly 3-5 times what daycare costs (we pay $300 / week, and that’s cheap for our area). If you already aren’t wealthy, you cannot afford the cost of a nanny, especially if you follow the law and pay payroll taxes. Your strategy of “just get a job where working longer hours pays more, and start a little website on the side” only works when you don’t have *responsibilities* above and beyond your only little selfish world. Taking risks is good, but guess what – your risk profile changes when there is an infant in the mix.
Not to mention that after having kids comes major health problems as a result of pregnancy for *many* women. Some people are not blessed with perfect health. Good luck actually getting any assistance from either the private insurance company (who you PAID FOR YEARS IN CASE OF THIS EVENTUALITY) or the gov’t (who only cares about protected classes of people).
Fundamentally your arguments lie on a neoliberal premise that the only reason you aren’t getting ahead is because you are ‘complaining’ and ‘not working enough’. Open your eyes – I’ve seen posts of yours before where you note that life isn’t fair. Saying “just work more hours” and ignoring any of the actual *reasons* people can’t is trying to have your cake and eat it too. Either life isn’t fair and these folks actually are struggling, or else life is fair and they should just ‘work longer’
Good stuff!
I think you’ll enjoy these two latest posts:
Why You Must Make $300,000 A Year To Live A Middle Class Lifestyle Today
A Day In The Life Of Two Stay At Home Parents Who Also Work
It is hard, very hard to get ahead and raise a family in an expensive city today. It’s partially why so many people are leaving the coasts.
But what is the alternative if you choose to stay? The only alternative is to increase productivity, take more risks, and work longer until you can’t take it anymore.
My goal is to help people find ways to monetize the things they enjoy doing.
Working 40 hours a week means you’re watching the clock.
We need to focus our energy on the things that make us long for the clock to slow down so we could have more time to work.
No one watched the clock any more. It must be passe.
When was the last time you counted how many people wear wristwatches?
It’s true that sometimes you have to work harder and smarter but not nessesarily longer hours. I believe person should love what it does. If one find what he/she enjoys I believe it’s obvious that working extra time for your own business is very smart thing to do. Most people get jobs to pay bills, but not necessary like them. The people you have talked here about obviously found that they don’t enjoy their jobs, they probably not sure what they would like to do and still in the search. Working longer hours leads to exhaustion and burn out, especcially if one not sure that it’s the job he/she wants to do for life. Person can be more productive working fewer hours and having longer rests in fact. Also, everyone if different, not everyone has your energy to work 80 hours a week. So you shoudn’t judge everyone so subjectively or emply they others that don’t work as long are lazy. Most of the time, my hard work for someone else wasn’t seen and appreciated. In fact most companies just want to exploit and squizee every bit of juice out of you and give as little salary in return, maxiizing company’s profits. It’s esspecially true to starting jobs, they are brutal, discoraging and demorilizing. Perhaps if you grew to be a great specialist in your field and compaies wants you, you can pull your wait in discussing your schedule and salary, but it takes years to get there, no wonder so many people you mentioned feel the strugle with situations they are in. I agree that you should start somewhere but I don’t think you should be exploited and disrespected in the process. I have seen it a lot when companies are run by older old school managers. How many people like their bosses? How many people want to have a boss today? I preffer to be my own boss. It’s a new world now, and It’s time for a change. Making your hobby a job and income earner is a true luck and everyone should strive to find it. Therefore, putting extra work toward building your own business in the spare time would be smart thing to do, but not sitting longer hours in the corporate chair gets you places.
I should add, that people live to enjoy their lives and not to work to the 7th sweat. So, they should spend more time to enjoy their lives than at work. I believe 40 hours of work is too much. Time with family, friends, loved ones and children is the most pressious, it’s a shame to waste it on corporations for a qestionable pay.
Also having less than 8 hours of sleep (personally for me), or what ever is enough for each individual, leads to dementia among other disease. You recommend working yourself to the grave. For me, health is more important than wealth. It’s healthy physically or emotionally have good leisure-work balance.
I remember back when I worked jobs that paid hourly, I would routinely pick up hours for people who didn’t want to work them.
And then those same people would complain that their check was too small, or worse yet, that they weren’t getting any hours!
This is a nice article, but it’s very much from an American point of view, where taxes are low and working harder pays off. In my country, The Netherlands, the marginal tax rate is so high, there is absolutely no point in working more or additional hours. For every additional Euro I earn, I have to pay close to 58% of taxes on it. I also have to pay 10% on additional pension premiums for that extra Euro. So my net gain for working longer / earning more is around a paltry 32 cents on the Euro. So there is no way I am going to work harder, take more responsibility or try to make a career, because there is no point. Others benefit the most from my additional work, so that’s not at all motivating for me. Instead, I work parttime and focus more on my trading / building up capital. Because despite of our high wage taxes, capital taxes here are very friendly. We only pay a small wealth tax of around 1,2% on our capital. We don’t have capital gain taxes or interest rate taxes. Dividends are taxed, but can be reclaimed for Dutch firms, so the effective rate is 0%. Taxes withheld on foreign investments can be subtracted from our wealth tax as well.
I have concluded that working hard doesn’t make you rich at all. At least not in this country, where the lowest tax rate starts at 36%, which I believe is already highter than the top rate in the US. Therefore, it’s no coincidence that we have some of the lowest average working hours in the world. Also see https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/which-european-countries-work-the-longest-hours/
Not trying to debunk your article, just wanted to share a point of view from a different perspective.
Willem, I appreciate your point of view from a country with extremely high tax rates. I work overtime hours here in the US because I get paid generously to do so at my current job. I work about 44-52 hours a week and everyone says to me “Why work more, you will just be taxed more?” No, the tax is the same no matter what I work, so why not make more money? This year I will be thrown into the higher tax bracket cause I will make over 6 figures, but the higher tax bracket is only 3%, so no big deal. I would rather make over a 100K and take home over 70K than make 70K and only take home 45K. I also live in an area that is lower cost of living, so I can put money aside for travel and saving up for a house. I couldn’t imagine working in Europe with outrageous taxes and high cost of living.
I think that how fulfilling a job is significantly impacts how hard/tiring it is to work. I’m by no means a slacker; in school I worked a part time job and took extra courses that I didn’t need to and achieved high grades (I know others do more but what I accomplished still isn’t nothing). I was tired but I definitely worked (including classwork as work) well over 40 hours a week and sometimes felt burned out but I could always push through it, because I was learning about things that interested me, that I thought I could apply in ways that would make life better for me and others, and I thought that my education would help me get a job that I’d find equally fulfilling.
Now, as a college graduate working a 40-hour week job marketing a product that I feel has very little value, by creating very low-traffic marketing content, for a company that knows their marketing is mediocre at best (based on analytics, not just my opinion) but has no desire to try new approaches or change existing ones, I find that I’m exhausted even before the end of my 8-hour days. Now, of course I’m looking for work elsewhere, and I never would have accepted this job in the first place if I hadn’t been a recent graduate who needed experience-any experience-, but I did need experience and I did need a job so as much as I hate mine I feel I made the right choice to take it. I’m sure other people, especially those who, unlike me, have dependents, need to accept jobs that aren’t ideal sometimes. In those cases, someone may feel like the hours seem extraordinary even if they aren’t, not because they’re a slacker, but because they hate their job. And yes, if they really need the job they should do their best at it, but that doesn’t erase the fact that doing so is extremely tiring if the job is a poor fit.
Especially if someone was a high achiever in school, not just in terms of grades because grades don’t always reflect effort, but in terms of effort, then not being able to find an employer who does meaningful work that wants to hire you can be genuinely depressing. I’ve been genuinely depressed for awhile now at this job, even when I’m not at work, because it depresses me that that the only company that saw my value has very little value to me. In school, you’re always working towards expanding your potential. Afterwards, if you work somewhere meaningless, it feels like “Where did my potential go?” “Was it ever there in the first place?”. Depressed people have no energy.
Sorry if this post comes across as aggressive. I’m not mad at you, just my situation right now.
working this 40 hour a week job as a cube rat is the reason i’ll end up blowing my head off
I think this is very short sighted post.
Ya’ll think 40 hours a week manuel labor isn’t hard? Maybe sitting at a desk isn’t hard. Which is why you can do it for 60+.
The problem in this country is inflation and our crony politicians.
Until these things change, I will complain it IS unfair. Companies don’t respect the employees.
I don’t get govt. Assistance nor do I want to. Even if I need it. Their are people who need it more.
It is a cycle they(the Rich, Elite) keep the poor in.
Or do you really think the poor are happy where they are and stuck in their ways? I’m sure it is easier to believe that than actually finding out individuals problems.
If you have a marketable skill that doesn’t always guarantee employment.
Boy! I really Agree with You!
The Feds have got to Raise the Value of a Buck & Lower the Cost Of Living!
And I also agree that this guy talking about 90 hr weeks has Never Worked a Physical Job! I can’t see Carpenters or brick layers Laborers putting in 90 hrs, sleeping 5 hrs a night ( without even counting golf time & family shit) IT WOULD KILL THE GUY! The body wouldn’t endure the abuse in a laborers job! Not even in a Pizza Guys Job; much less working like a Mule in a Foundry!
These kinds college guys don’t think of the Real Working guys when they talk about Extra Hrs!
Thanks for Posting this!
Kind Regards,
Robin
“We’ve got an immigrant janitor here in San Francisco who makes $271,000 a year due to working tons of overtime. He’s not alone either! His elevator/escalator technician makes $284,000 a year due to working way more than 40 hours a week as well.”
OK,These guys are working double the normal amount. Instead of 8 hours per day, they are working 16 hours per day. They are earning far more than the normal amount. So, by this logic, it means that the immigrant janitor is paid more than 11,000 dollars per month for a normal 8 hours per day schedule? Meanwhile 50% of America lives with 3000 dollars top per month?
Does anybody realise the lunacy of this post?
Why is it lunacy to take advantage of opportunity while its there? Do you think he’s really working 16 hours non stop? There are peaks and valleys in terms of traffic periods throughout the day.
Point is which company would pay janitors and elevator technician that much. If that janitor works 40 hours a week, they’d get paid $135,500 a year.
Just wanna say I recently discovered your site and it is incredible! I feel that early financial freedom will be easy (I’m an undergrad now) just looking at the wealth of resources here.
My thoughts on this: No one should be complaining about this article. It’s just common sense.
The two prerequisites mentioned were (1) You work less than 40 hrs/week and (2) You are financially unhappy.
Either you can just find a way to work more hours (and not just at your full-time job) or you can try to change the government or workplace system in your favor. If you live in the US, the government option is laughable, and it’s much easier to change things yourself than to rely heavily on others.
Personally, I’m really excited to be doing ~80 hrs/week outside of class. It helps if you’re challenged and care about what you’re doing!
“No one should”, should is a generalization. You will find that generalizations often do not fit the real world. It is also considered a fallacy of logic.
I found working 60-80 hours a week took a lot of interest away from something I loved and was good at. It was never the same afterwards.
I’ve been reading your blog for a long time, and while I believe working hard is a good idea, I believe you are a workaholic.
You could be right. Was there any catalyst for why you decided to read this post that serval years old now?
But I don’t think I’m really that much of a workaholic anymore, or lease for the past five years. I average about 25 hours a week since I left corporate America.
Sam, although I agree with you that people should not complain for not getting ahead while they do not want put in more time than others, working more than 40 hours a week is a mediocre, sometimes even bad strategy to get ahead.
Productivity aside, people can put lots of hours in something mundane and repetitive, not learning any new skills, eventually their jobs got automated. These are not just truck driving or manufacturing jobs, most parts of your old colleagues’ jobs at Goldman will probably disappear very soon as well. Even executives in Wall street lose jobs for not being able to adapt to new technologies.
For some people, the only way to get out of poverty is education, you can put many hours at a minimum wage job, impress your boss by hard work, get promoted, and make an extra 5 dollars an hour. Or you can spend time to attend community college or coding bootcamps, then make an extra 20 dollars/hour when switching to a new field. Sadly, many Americans don’t have the time of money to learn new skills once they are out of college. They are stuck in their demanding jobs day after day and are too tired to look at the big picture. Years later, they suddenly find their jobs are being taken away by robots.
This entire idea of “american dream” need to change with the current advance of technology, “working hard” is not as important anymore. Learning in-demand skills is the new key factor of a high income. On a personal level, it means spending less time in your corporation job, and spending more time on learning. On a public policy level, you don’t want an entire country of hard-working but low-skilled workers who will soon become jobless because of automation.
There’s another advantage of spending time on acquiring new skills: you can easily jump to a better work environment when you are not happy at your current role, making the time before financial independence much more tolerable, sometimes even enjoyable.
Optimizing income/hour is far more efficient and happier than optimizing total income imo. The extra time you spend on work only benefits the employer, but the time you spent learning benefit both yourself and your employer in the long run.
And it sounds like if I worked for you, that I’d be happy to leave for your competitor. If you’re that obsessed with success and money that it consumes your every waking thought, then that’s cool if that’s your thing. Other people have lives and are busy with shit that matters. If you want to label me a lazy sack of shit because I want to eat dinner with my family, play with my son, read him books at bedtime, and spend the evening with my wife, then I’ll happily wear that label. I’ve heard many times that the #1 regret of some people at the end of life is having worked too much.
I understand that if people want to bitch about their circumstances then by all means they should get off their ass and do something about it. However from the tone of this post it sounds like you need to find other forms of happiness in life. I hope you find it.
Not sure where you see that I’ve labeled you as a lazy sack of shit. Where do you see this, and why so much anger?
I’m highlighting folks who want to get ahead, but who aren’t willing to do the work. If you’re happy with where you are, why does this bother you at all? I don’t get it.
I retired at 34 in 2012 after putting in the grind and couldn’t be happier. Hard work is worth it, especially since it takes no skill.
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Yes, there are. But I find complaining has only benefited me, when dome in the right manner. If you present your accomplishments and ask for more money, you might be able to get more even if you only work 40 hours per week. Most extra hours are of marginal productivity anyway, studies have shown. Any work I have done after 5pm usually looks like that of a drunken sailor, yet I was completely sober at the time.
I hope this is satire. Otherwise, you seem like a good brainwashed American that thinks that we should get paid like shit while being more productive and making CEOs more money than 30 years ago…
The US’s GDP is comparable to China’s, whose workforce is four times the size of ours and runs off of communist culture. That’s how insanely underpaid we are. China’s GDP should be greater than the US’s, yet the US government has consistently supported business priveledges to allow for increased income inequality and poverty.
Get off the workhorse mentality, it’s not the 1940s. Join a union and demand higher pay, CEOs don’t need all of that money to not invest in the workforce or expand the company.
It definitely is a little funny that there are people who complain why they can’t get ahead even though they work less than 40 hours a week. But in a land as easy, rich, and comfortable as ours, it’s understandable why many of us would rather just kick back. But that’s the opportunity given to those of us who are willing to try harder!
We tend to get soft the richer we get, which is why you haven’t seen so much innovation out of Europe compared to the US. They got a head start, and I think the US will just turn into Europe over the next 50 years.
See: Abolish Welfare Mentality: A Janitor Makes $271,000 A Year
“The US’s GDP is comparable to China’s, whose workforce is four times the size of ours and runs off of communist culture. That’s how insanely underpaid we are. China’s GDP should be greater than the US’s, yet the US government has consistently supported business priveledges to allow for increased income inequality and poverty.”
Using China as an example to highlight the plight of the American worker is absolutely hilarious. A clever satire of stereotypical American ignorance?
Some quick facts:
– China’s average annual wage was $8,655 in 2014.
– 387 million rural workers (about half the working population) earn about $2,000 a year.
– China doesn’t meet international labor law standards, so workers rights to join trade unions and collectively bargain are quite restricted.
Sure American workers have their problems, but China is actually a great example of how great American workers have it compared to most of the world.
Most people do not want to work over 40 hours as they would rather be out socializing or relaxing. I can work an additional 100 hours of overtime a month. Overtime at my office is available all of the time. Most people just choose not to do it. I have been working the additional hours and using the money to max out my 401K each year and contribute to a 529 plan. I also use it to pay for private school tuition for my two children. If you add up all of the overtime worked over the past years it is well over $400,000. There are people at work who never work overtime and live paycheck to paycheck. They do not have any savings, do not contribute to a 401K plan and do not own a house. I sit at my desk listening to them complain about how they cannot afford to take a trip to Italy this year or how their rent has increased. The extra overtime has helped us to put aside money to purchase a home with a 20% down payment. Our home has already appreciated by over 30%. It takes away from some family time and sleep, but it has made a difference in the way we are able to provide for our children. I do not intend to keep working so much overtime in the future, but just long enough to where he have a substantial amount saved for retirement.
Hi,
You wrote that you had to get to work at 5:30 a.m. and you were expected to stay until at least 7:30 a.m. That’s only two hours. So why are you speaking against those who work only 40 hours a week. A person working 40 hours a week isn’t going to become rich and shouldn’t expect but he or she should not be in poverty. There are others ways to work where you don’t get a paycheck but it will save you money. I clean my house instead of hiring someone. I do my finances instead of hiring an accountant. I cook from scratch instead of going to a restaurant. I’ve grown vegetable gardens. I don’t do flower gardens–I only garden what I can eat. Other ways of working without a paycheck are making your own clothes or getting clothes at a thrift store and remodeling them. I have a 40-hour a week job and sometimes overtime and when OT is available I take advantage of it. I don’t whine and complain like many of my coworkers. I have never cared for working for someone, although I do. I have a lot of DIY projects because I like cooking and crafts. I’d rather do that then go to work to pay someone to do the work I enjoy doing.
7:30PM. Typo.
People are free to do whatever they want. All is good!
Wow, lots of suckers out there. If you want to work 80 hours a week, be my guest. If you think you need to work 80 hours a week to be successful, you are doing it wrong. You said you are a “lowly analyst”, obviously you are going to work long hours. That industry eats their babies. Avoid finance and you can have a good work/ life balance. I studied math and physics, obtained a masters in physics, and chose my job wisely. I work 40 hours/ week at most with plenty of skiing and mountain biking. But, you probably have a boring life, so enjoy being a boring person and working just so you can retire and continue to be boring.
Greetings from 10 days in Lake Tahoe! The power is ridiculous now because we just got 8 feet of snow in the first week of January.
It is great you have found balance in your life and work. You are one of the lucky minorities.
But I will say that I don’t regret working 60-80 hours a week in my 20s and early 30s looking back on things now that I’m almost 40. In fact, I’m thankful I was able to work hard while I had the energy because it gets harder to sustain a good work ethic as you get older.
Retiring from corporate America at age 34 to pursue your hobbies isn’t for everybody. But for me, not a day goes by where I’m not thankful for not having to commute to work, deal with a micromanager, or play office politics any more. Being free to do whatever you want because of your passive income streams is priceless!
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Go Tribe!
This article made me feel like a lazy bum lol. There are several lessons I can take from this article, for now I am going to try to convince myself that working 55 hours per week is the minimum I should be working. Thank you!
Take action my friend. 40 hours a week is so arbitrarily LOW if you want to make more money.
Check out this latest post: Abolish Welfare Mentality: A Janitor Makes $271,000 A Year, Why Can’t You?
I lived in The US for 2 years and as an outsider I was really surprised to see how long middle-class Americans have to work to have a middle-class life.
I can say that although The US is also considered a developed country, Western European Countries are way ahead of The US in terms of their level of development. It is not just how much money you make or how much wealth you produce as a society, but it is also about how you share the wealth created.
It’s funny to see Americans have to work at 2 jobs to make ends meet while the Federal Government spends half of its disposable budget on the army creating more wars and misery for the world. It’s really sad to see students being have to work while attending college or seeing people being homeleaa because they could not handle their medicle bills. I think that there is more than enough wealth in the US, there is a problem with the way the wealth is shared.
Ah, but the income upside is HUGE in the US. Check out this janitor who makes $271,000 a year.
All anybody really wants in America is a correlation with effort and reward.
Some people want to ACTUALLY MAKE DECENT LIVINGS AND, YOU KNOW… LIVE
Not *live to work*, esp. to the bone
Few people want to be in the office *all day*, ffs
Also… you’re seriously arguing against OT? In 2016…? Jesus…
Overtime is typically EXTRA HOURS, last I checked! Sure, some firm technically “require” employees to work “overtime”, but 40 is the established norm. 9 to 5 is well-enough. We need personal lives and leisure time, for god sake, too! If you sacrifice some of that extra time, you should be rewarded a bit more! Makes sense to me… but your robber-baron mindset can’t fathom that, for whatever reason.
You sound just like the kind of goofy boss who would SHIP JOBS OVERSEAS at the cost of THOUSANDS OF EMPLOYEES’ FUTURE LIVELIHOODS just to save a few hundred-million in profits in the short run, even though it probably wouldn’t matter in the long run, tbh. All to satisfy some d-bag, rich/semi-rich shareholders who care more about their portfolios than actual people who are hurt by bad business decisions.
Everything is rational. Your comment gives me confidence that everything is OK! I agree with you. If you don’t want to make more money, you don’t need to work as much. All about living a balanced and wonderful life.
You should check out the post: The Fear Of Running Out Of Retirement Is Completely Overblown
I retired from the workforce at age 34 in 2012 and could not be happier! Less taxes, less stress, more freedom, more happiness. Totally worth it!
Also check out: Spoiled Or Clueless? Try Working A Minimum Wage Job As An Adult
Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted everything, but I don’t think Sam was attacking people who DON’T work their every waking hour in this post, and I am kinda surprised at the hate he’s gotten (and the fact that seemingly no one’s picked up on this).
It seems like he is targeting the people who work 40 hours per week (which is the STANDARD American work week, even if it is an obscenely large amount of hours to work), vocally complain about either not being rich or not making more money than they currently do, and do NOTHING to further their situation. No putting in extra hours at work to increase your productivity and earn a raise and a promotion, no side hustles to earn extra cash on the side, no courses or classes to further their education, no nothing. As if just complaining about not making more will suddenly cause your paycheck to increase.
He isn’t complaining about the many people who ARE satisfied with their incomes; he’s talking about the people who expect to get rich by doing what unfortunately is the standard amount of work in this country (I do agree that 40 hours a week is a LOT if you are not absolutely in LOVE with what you do. I can barely survive 1 hour at my job). You don’t differentiate yourself by just doing the standard amount of work. That’s why I run a blog and a business on the side.
Though honestly, Sam, I would have left out the part about “playing golf with clients”. Sort of something not applicable to the rest of us. For me, dealing with customers is just a matter of trying to survive each interaction with my job and emotional well being still intact. Playing golf with clients and treating them to fancy steakhouse dinners on the company card is not exactly in my itinerary.
Sincerely,
ARB–Angry Retail Banker
I’m not sure your estimate of 35-42 hours of sleep a week is healthy for everyone. It averages out to about 5-6 hours a night, but the average amount of sleep most people need varies from 7.5 – 9 hours. Everyone’s different, though, so some people need less – like you – and others need more. There’s a lot of research out there on how sleep deprivation impacts your immune system, your memory, and your ability to function day to day, especially when driving a vehicle. There have been a few studies saying that sleep deprivation can impair your ability to drive just as badly as having a few drinks. Just some food for thought.
I once was working serving a group of smart people. One of the group along with a request that was being fulfilled and later exceeded bragged to me, as follows.
He said, “I work 200 hours a week.” Implying that I should too, especially on his thing. Rumor had it this person had a Ph.D. in a field that includes math.
200 [hours] divided by 7 [days] is greater than 28.5 [hours/day].
Wow you hate labor/women/the poor/pretty much everyone. A 40 hour work week is totally inhumane. If you know anything at all about labor history (which you don’t — neoliberal financial types like you never do) the 40 hour work week was intended to be reduced, drastically. And it will be — the capitalist battle to appropriate all of time into oppressive working hours was lost the moment workers decided they have dignity.
Imagine a world where people like you no longer have control. People that hate people, whose gods are money and productivity. Your time is ending.
What I’m saying is: higher pay, less hours, and if it’s at the expense of productivity or the millionaire class I could NOT care less.
Daniel, I’ve joined the ranks of working less than 40 hours a week and paying less taxes and love it! No wonder why so many people complain about working more than 40 hours a week and not getting ahead.
It’s much better to work less, pay less, earn less and live life more! Oh, and I’ve also got more time to help other people.
I’m reformed! Hope you forgive me. But I will say, I don’t regret working more than 40 hours a week for 13 years in a row after college to be able to free. It was absolutely worth it. How about you?
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Of course no one working 40 hours a week should expect to become a millionaire. At time I’ve really had to look hard and really push to even get 40 hours a week. some people want to be millionaires and if they do they need to work 100 hours a week. Professional athletes and other entertainers work more than 40 hours a week. There are other people who are not interested in being millionaires, they want to enjoy their families and enjoy life and not have to work all the time. They can’t expect to millionaires and they probably don’t want to. I ride the bus with someone whose hours were cut and she’s having a hard time. A couple of us have recommended she get another job with benefits but she won’t just complains. I believe that anyone who works 40 hours a week should not live in poverty. That person should be able to have the basic necessities of life.
As noted not everyone accomplishes the same amount in 40 hours. The guy I share a cube with regularly stays late, and comes in on weeknds but doesn’t seem to be completing things. I get my desk cleared daily or weekly and feel fine working my 40. I keep my expenses low & save so I will have flexibility later. *shrug*
Hey glad you were able to think that far ahead…glad to hear you are living it up.
Yeah the tone of this post is a bit odd…seeing as FS is an Asian with his parents immigrating and moving around I can understand his mentality, as I have the same background.
It’s all hustle. Look at Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, work culture is deeply embedded and “losing face” because you don’t keep up with the boss and executives is real.
Work life balance is much more prevalent in Europe and parts of USA. I’m just surprised that him living in San Fran and Hawaii didn’t give him a more chilled lifestyle. Go catch some waves or chill by the beach dude.
I wanted to hustle early on because I knew I wouldn’t be able to last for my entire career in finance. Actually just got back from three weeks in Europe and am going to Hawaii for 10 days this Wednesday.
https://www.financialsamurai.com/vacation-money-is-crazy-money-staying-financially-disciplined-while-traveling/
https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-best-way-to-travel-for-free-and-lower-your-taxable-income/
I genuinely believe that the way you grew up has negatively affected the way you see the world. It’s quite unfortunate that you grew up in the conditions that are you did. I’m surprised none of the other commenters mentioned how your insecurities are projected through your writing.
Perhaps consulting with a psychologist can help you with some of these issues.
I find this article very bizarre in terms of the accusatory tone of the article itself and the responses that the author has to people commenting.
If somebody chooses to work under 40 hours a week, that is their prerogative. If they wonder why they aren’t moving ahead, that is also their prerogative. To be honest, it’s not my business or anybody else’s.
I recently had a glimpse of my potential future that has made me re-evaluate the relationship that I have with my work. I have always worked full-time and freelanced and did a bunch of self-learning stuff since finishing school. Does it mean I’m happy? Certainly not. I love my work – I truly do. The industry is fascinating to me and having team pow wows is invigorating and exciting to me. In fact, I have always worked my ass off and became successful in the ways that I measure success.
But quite recently my partner’s mother has slipped into depression. This is a woman who worked her ass off her entire life. Harvard educated, founded her own micro-finance bank and became such a powerhouse that she’s been invited all around the world to lecture on microfinance. When she retired….all of the sudden she did not understand who she was anymore as she had always been defined by her work.
I’m not saying that everybody would end up like this. But it’s a very easy path to take and I could see myself going down that path. When I realized that I hadn’t seen friends in months, that I was foregoing simple pleasures like working out or cooking a meal to work and sleeping 4 hours a night (which is actually dangerous for me as I have a disorder) and my relationship was beginning to be strained.
Life isn’t about work. It’s great that you were able to retire early, but that’s not a reality for everybody and your post misses the whole concept of privilege. Poverty is cyclical and generational and while there will always be inspirational stories, those are the ones we hear and we don’t usually hear the stories of cyclical poverty because let’s face, they don’t make us feel good.
Like you, I grew up in a middle income family. Education was very accessible to me and I graduated with 0 student debt. I am in a fairly well paid industry and it is not difficult for me to find work, either in a company or freelance. But my partner? He’s a chef and he was offered a sous chef position in our city’s fanciest restaurant where a meal will cost you at least $200. Starting rate of pay? $14/hr – the statistics for the living rate in my city to be able to have a unimpoverished standard of living is $20/hr. Another friend? He works in the exact same industry as me. He is a refugee from a poor family and he worked his ass off to get an education. Compare this to our friend who is a white male doing the exact same job? He comes from a wealthy family, education was totally accessible and he’s making more money and they do literally the exact same job. It’s not as black and white as you make it seem because life is not black and white and neither are humans.
There are different reasons for everybody for why they work and what makes them happy. I used to judge people who working 40 hours, 8-5 for decades and just staying at the same job. To me, I thought it meant that they had no ambition. But then I saw how happy they are with their families and how I have no family where I am and I’ve lost many of my connections with my friends because I’m just working all the god damn time. Is it healthy? Am I happy? Will I be exactly like my partner’s mother when I retire? I don’t know. I’m glad that your relationship with your work works for you, but it doesn’t work for everybody else and that’s okay.
Amen to that!
It’s not the number of hours you work, but what you achieve during your work time. It is possible that you wouldn’t be able to accomplish “much” in 40 hours, but other people might, just as it is possible that, for whatever combination of reasons, other people don’t derive the same satisfaction out of their work that you seem to. This might surprise you, but not all lives and not all minds are the same. It might further stun you that there is in fact no definitive correct way and incorrect way when it comes to doing a good job.
75-80 hours of work is not necessary for many jobs. In my experiences (as manager in both software and finance projects), precious few of the people who work so many hours are legit overachievers, but most put in a lot of fluff, but don’t want to look inferior on paper, so they compete in the hours game, just as they compete in the compensation game. I hope that you are in the former group, since the latter are sad sacks indeed. But try to be honest with yourself and others. 40-60 is fine for most people who *want* to have work/life separation. No one is fooling me with a barrage of impressive numbers. It is *always* what lies behind the numbers. If you don’t believe this now, just give it time and you will learn.