In the City of London, we’re taught to obsess over ROI (Return on Investment). We analyze every basis point and every decimal place. But for a long time, I ignored the most important investment of all: my time.
A few years ago, I was working 50+ hours a week, earning a decent salary, and spending it as fast as it came in. I felt productive, but I was actually just running on a treadmill. It wasn’t until I stopped looking at prices in pounds and started looking at them in hours that my entire perspective shifted.
What is “Life Energy”?
Money is something you trade your life for. When you go to work, you are selling a finite resource—your time—for pieces of paper. Once those hours are gone, they are gone forever.
When you buy something, you aren’t just paying with money; you are paying with the hours of your life it took to earn that money.
The Reality Check: Your Real Hourly Wage
Most people think that if they earn £25 an hour, a £50 dinner costs them two hours of work. They’re wrong. To find your Real Hourly Wage, you have to do some “No-BS” math:
- Start with your take-home pay (after taxes).
- Subtract the costs of working: Commuting, work clothes, the expensive coffee you need to wake up, and the “decompression” drinks you buy because your job is stressful.
- Add the time spent on work-related tasks: Commuting time, prepping for meetings at home, and the time it takes to recover from a long day.
When I did this, I realized my “prestige” finance wage was actually much lower than I thought. Suddenly, that new gadget or designer shirt didn’t look like it cost £200—it looked like three days of my life sitting in an office chair.
The Fulfillment Curve
There is a point where spending more money no longer makes your life better. In fact, it starts making it worse because you have to work harder, stay longer, and stress more to maintain a lifestyle you don’t even have time to enjoy.
My rule is simple: If a purchase doesn’t provide more fulfillment than the “Life Energy” it cost to acquire, it’s a bad trade. Period.
The Bottom Line
Stop being a “high-earner, low-wealth” cliché. Wealth isn’t about how much you can spend; it’s about how much of your own time you actually own.
Don’t spend your life energy on things that don’t love you back.