Once, while sitting and drinking a sweet frappuccino with a friend, I had an interesting thought: How much money do I make per second?
It was interesting and a little fun, and it led me to check into the incomes of other people — from regular people like you and me to CEOs and athletes — and how much money they earn per second.
As it turns out, I don’t make much, but that’s OK — for now.
When I ran these numbers, I took total income for the year and counted it as if they were getting paid constantly, every second of every day, all year round.
I did this for two reasons.
First, it’s extremely difficult to get a hold of someone’s time sheets, so this gives us a standard for comparison, as many of the people listed get a salary, not a wage.
Second, and more importantly, if you don’t already think you are working a job 24 hours a day everyday, you should.
Wait! Before you think I have a distorted sense on obligation to my job, consider this: Let’s say you take a night job at the local 7-Eleven. You stay up all night working the register, restocking drinks and gum — all the world’s most fulfilling activities.
After a long night’s work, you drive home and go to sleep. During the day, you’re not getting paid, but your night job stops you from taking any day jobs, right?
Every job has it. If I asked you to come and speak at my convention and offered to pay you $5,000 to do it, that would usually be a good deal. If you had to fly to Africa to get there, speak for two days then fly back home, the length of the trip would be taken into account. After all, you lost all that time when you could have been doing something else.
When measuring how much money you really have, it’s sometimes useful to measure your income in terms of a commodity. For example, I can buy two slices of pizza or 1.5 Mochasippis per hour.
See that? More fun than watching “Jersey Shore.”
Dream big!
Let’s use an iPad for comparison. Apple’s newest baby has an entry-level price of $499. A student worker at the University making $7.50 per hour would have to work for 3,992 minutes to make that, or 2.77 days. The average salary of an overseas missionary is $69,000, according to SimplyHired.com, meaning they would need only 3,808 minutes of passing time to make enough to buy an iPad — around 2.6 days, or walking 190 miles non-stop.
The average LSU full-time salary faculty member made $79,954 last year, or one iPad per 3,287 minutes — only marginally better than a missionary.
But what about our beloved Chancellor? Michael Martin leaves those salaries in the dust and only needs 657 minutes of breath to make enough to buy an iPad. That means he could grab a spot on the old leather couch Saturday morning, watch the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, then grab an iPad from all that hard work — to post about it on Facebook, no doubt.
Then there are the big money makers, like the CEO of Oracle, who needs only 3.11 minutes to make iPad-level cash. Think about this: He could go to sleep, and in the time it takes you to run into the gas station and buy gum, he made enough cash while sleeping to buy Apple’s new tablet. Nice!
To get out of the business world and show aspiring young athletes that all the money isn’t found in cubicles or high-rise towers, Tiger Woods brought in a little more than $90.5 million last year — despite all the controversy surrounding him — or one iPad every 2.9 minutes.
What you should take away from this?
Every second you have is precious and has cash value to boot. When you look at a new job, or any opportunity, think about the effects that aren’t as obvious — the opportunities lost or deferred — and take those into account.
Finally, while I in no way promote spending every dime you get, start getting in the habit of comparing how much you have to what it buys for you. You might be surprised.
Devin Graham is a 21-year-old business management senior from Prairieville. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dgraham.
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Contact Devin Graham at [email protected]