Author Topic: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?  (Read 102636 times)

arebelspy

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What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« on: May 16, 2014, 06:16:08 PM »
This came up in another thread, but I thought it was cool enough to start its own thread so more people see it.

Essentially the idea is to figure out how much passive income you're receiving and put that into an hourly rate.

As of August 2013, the average American works about 1700 hours/year.

So if you take your stache size and multiply it by 0.04 (for a 4% SWR, 0.03 for a 3% SWR, and so on), you get your annual income at your chosen SWR.  Dividing that by 1700 then gives you the hourly rate at which your little green soldiers are working.

Say, for example, you have a stache of 200,000.  That would provide you 8000/yr at a 4% SWR.  Someone working 1700 hours to warn that would be getting paid $4.70/hour.

To get your stache up to a minimum wage amount of $7.50/hour, working 1700 hours, you need approximately 320k.

To make a minimum wage of 7.50 per working hour, you'd need a stache of $318,750 at a 4% SWR.

In other words if your stache is 320k or more, your passive income is like having a person working a full time, minimum wage job for you.

And, of course, if you have a stache of 1.28MM, that's like having an extra person working a full time job that pays 30.12/hour for you.  Or you could think of it as 4(!) people working full time, minimum wage jobs for you.  That's pretty awesome.

Thought that was fun to figure out both the total hourly rate that my stache is earning as a full time job, and how many full time minimum wage workers are working for me.  :)
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CarDude

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #1 on: May 16, 2014, 06:24:46 PM »
Ha, I like thinking of it this way. Be right back, got to do some maths.

dragoncar

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #2 on: May 16, 2014, 06:32:14 PM »
I like the idea, but money never sleeps so I think we should use 24/7/365. 

Edit: I'm also sure Jacob at ERE mentioned this concept, but can't find it.. Might only be in the book
« Last Edit: May 16, 2014, 06:44:16 PM by dragoncar »

Heart of Tin

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #3 on: May 16, 2014, 07:44:11 PM »
My 'stache is unemployed 11 months out of the year.

arebelspy

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #4 on: May 16, 2014, 08:09:43 PM »
I like the idea, but money never sleeps so I think we should use 24/7/365. 

Sure, money doesn't sleep, but I never liked the concept of 24/7/365 because it feels silly to me to stretch it out over the night and weekend, because I wouldn't be working that time anyways.  Sure, it's fun to say "I make $XX every hour, even when I'm sleeping" but then you can't compare it to minimum wage, or to what most people make per hour or whatever, to do that you'd want to compare it to how many hours they work.

All of the hourly wages we hear (minimum wage at 7.50/hour, or a professional making $30/hour, or whatever) are only working hours.

So I liked the concept of "working hours" and using the 1700 number, rather than 24/7/365, which isn't possible to compare to a normal hourly wage.
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CommonCents

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #5 on: May 16, 2014, 08:48:25 PM »
$11.88/hr.

DH is not comfortable with a 4% rate, so I've used 3% instead.  I also work more than 1700 (how was that calculated?). I have 2 weeks vacation (sadly), 3 personal days, and 11 holidays - but a 7.5 hr "official workday" so I used 1770 instead.

I need almost a quarter of a million dollars more to have two minimum wage employees (at state min wage).

Roland of Gilead

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #6 on: May 16, 2014, 08:56:05 PM »
We are at about $31/hr then, which is like 20 Chinese working in a sweat shop on the new I-phone.  This is fitting since I own a chunk of Apple stock.

Cheddar Stacker

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #7 on: May 16, 2014, 09:05:20 PM »
I'm happy to report my stache employs approximately one full time minimum wage employee. I feel very fortunate to be in this position, particularly considering there are many people trying to get by on a minimum wage salary.

Really puts things in perspective when you consider how hard someone else has to work for that kind of cash. I'm not saying I didn't "work hard" to save it, I'm just saying it feels good knowing I will never have to struggle to earn a minimum wage since my stache already does it for me.

Thanks strider3700 for the original post, and arebelspy for breaking it down into a typical work week.

arebelspy

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #8 on: May 16, 2014, 09:15:15 PM »
I also work more than 1700 (how was that calculated?).

See the second link from the OP - it's how much the average American works (as of Aug 2013), according to economic data from The St. Louis Federal Reserve.

I'm happy to report my stache employs approximately one full time minimum wage employee. I feel very fortunate to be in this position, particularly considering there are many people trying to get by on a minimum wage salary.

Really puts things in perspective when you consider how hard someone else has to work for that kind of cash. I'm not saying I didn't "work hard" to save it, I'm just saying it feels good knowing I will never have to struggle to earn a minimum wage since my stache already does it for me.

That gratitude is such an awesome attitude, love it.

We are very fortunate, those of us posting on the MMM site, for a number of reasons.  Getting this perspective on my stache really helps me appreciate how lucky I am, versus a feeling of it not being enough (which I rarely experience, but understand why one might, in their striving for FIRE).
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milla

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #9 on: May 16, 2014, 09:41:10 PM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?

Drat.

Roland of Gilead

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #10 on: May 16, 2014, 09:44:37 PM »
Another thing to think about is that $30,000 cell phone you are carrying around.

$100 a month phone contract is $1200 a year which takes a stache of $30,000 to support @4% SWR.

Cheddar Stacker

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #11 on: May 16, 2014, 09:47:20 PM »
That gratitude is such an awesome attitude, love it.

We are very fortunate, those of us posting on the MMM site, for a number of reasons.  Getting this perspective on my stache really helps me appreciate how lucky I am, versus a feeling of it not being enough (which I rarely experience, but understand why one might, in their striving for FIRE).

I could just as easily have written "man I'm ashamed/embarrassed my rate is only $7.50 and ARS and Roland are at $30+, and I do admit I occasionally have stache envy. However, the stoic philosophy has become second nature and I'm very excited about that. Perspective is a wonderful thing.

Cheddar Stacker

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #12 on: May 16, 2014, 09:48:56 PM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?

Drat.

Hopefully your crappy restaurant patrons tip well. : )

Roland of Gilead

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #13 on: May 16, 2014, 09:51:58 PM »
Quote from: Cheddar Stacker link=topic=18047.msg294255#msg294255
I could just as easily have written "man I'm ashamed/embarrassed my rate is only $7.50 and ARS and Roland are at $30+, and I do admit I occasionally have stache envy. However, the stoic philosophy has become second nature and I'm very excited about that. Perspective is a wonderful thing.

We are older than ARS though. (maybe older than you are)

Cheddar Stacker

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #14 on: May 16, 2014, 10:13:44 PM »
Quote from: Cheddar Stacker link=topic=18047.msg294255#msg294255
I could just as easily have written "man I'm ashamed/embarrassed my rate is only $7.50 and ARS and Roland are at $30+, and I do admit I occasionally have stache envy. However, the stoic philosophy has become second nature and I'm very excited about that. Perspective is a wonderful thing.

We are older than ARS though. (maybe older than you are)

Yeah, I think maybe you are, but I'm older than ARS too. I'm 35. Late to the ER party, but saved a respectable amount (not a mustachian amount) due to mostly frugal ways for the majority of my life. My main point though is it really doesn't matter if yours is bigger than mine. My $7.50 is 1/4 of your $30, but it's > milla's $1, and milla's $1 is > someone else's negative $1, and on and on.

And hell, I'm just glad I have my health, a career making more than minimum wage, all my limbs and senses, a happy marriage, etc. The passive $7.50/hour is just icing Roland, or maybe a nice steak, whatever your fancy.

Roland of Gilead

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #15 on: May 16, 2014, 10:22:31 PM »

Yeah, I think maybe you are, but I'm older than ARS too. I'm 35. Late to the ER party, but saved a respectable amount (not a mustachian amount) due to mostly frugal ways for the majority of my life. My main point though is it really doesn't matter if yours is bigger than mine. My $7.50 is 1/4 of your $30, but it's > milla's $1, and milla's $1 is > someone else's negative $1, and on and on.

And hell, I'm just glad I have my health, a career making more than minimum wage, all my limbs and senses, a happy marriage, etc. The passive $7.50/hour is just icing Roland, or maybe a nice steak, whatever your fancy.

Yes, very good attitude.  We are 44/45 so have had 9 more years to compound our stache.  I think we only had about $2/hr 9 years ago.


arebelspy

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #16 on: May 16, 2014, 10:25:16 PM »
My main point though is it really doesn't matter if yours is bigger than mine.

Absolutely. 

As I've said before, the two most important variables for age when you FIRE seem to be: when you find the concept of ER, and how much financial baggage you have when you do.  Some of us were lucky to find it early (and even have it available at the right time), others just didn't run across it or it wasn't really "out there".  No big deal.

(Also I'm not at $30+/hour.. yet. :) )

My main point though is it really doesn't matter if yours is bigger than mine. My $7.50 is 1/4 of your $30, but it's > milla's $1, and milla's $1 is > someone else's negative $1, and on and

(Emphasis added.)

Oh man, I didn't think about it the other way, being in debt and paying interest.

Say you're 91k in debt (mix of student loans, car, whatever) at ~7% (what student loans often go for nowadays).  That means you're paying 6735 in interest annually.  To pay that, you'd need to work half that 1700 hours at minimum wage of 7.50.

Or, in other words, you have to work extra at a part time minimum wage job to make up for that interest*.  Yikes.

*Now you may not actually do this, but make enough at your normal job, but the point is just like you can think of your stache as an extra person working an extra job for you, you can think of the interest accruing as you needing to work another job.  Ouch.
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agent_clone

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #17 on: May 17, 2014, 03:33:33 AM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?
  Sourc
Drat.

Nah, your back in 1956! Source: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/minimumwage/a/history-minimum-wage.htm

For me, my $AU1.80ish  gets me a Female back to the 1970's in Australia, I think?  Source is: http://cbe.anu.edu.au/research/papers/cehspapers/SP07_008.pdf
and i'm not sure on the hours.

deborah

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #18 on: May 17, 2014, 03:57:22 AM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?
  Sourc
Drat.

Nah, your back in 1956! Source: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/minimumwage/a/history-minimum-wage.htm

For me, my $AU1.80ish  gets me a Female back to the 1970's in Australia, I think?  Source is: http://cbe.anu.edu.au/research/papers/cehspapers/SP07_008.pdf
and i'm not sure on the hours.
When I started working, I was paid $25 a week - before equal pay (only just, they were changing the workforce at the factory so that every job only had men or women in it, so they would still pay women poor wages when equal pay came in - and I was probably on a junior's wage - but $AU1.80 and I would have felt RICH!!

agent_clone

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #19 on: May 17, 2014, 04:46:36 AM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?
  Sourc
Drat.

Nah, your back in 1956! Source: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/minimumwage/a/history-minimum-wage.htm

For me, my $AU1.80ish  gets me a Female back to the 1970's in Australia, I think?  Source is: http://cbe.anu.edu.au/research/papers/cehspapers/SP07_008.pdf
and i'm not sure on the hours.
When I started working, I was paid $25 a week - before equal pay (only just, they were changing the workforce at the factory so that every job only had men or women in it, so they would still pay women poor wages when equal pay came in - and I was probably on a junior's wage - but $AU1.80 and I would have felt RICH!!

I'm not sure precicely when you started working, but if you look at page 11, in 1970 the minimum wages for females were between 36.59 and 44.19, rates rose significantly over the next decade.  I wouldn't be surprised if the percentages of the national miniumum wage haven't changed since then so assuming you were 18 in 1970 then it would be around $25 for the $36.69 wage.  I'm not sure how many hours per week were in those wages though...  There is also a significant difference between 1973 and 1974 for both males and females.

deborah

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #20 on: May 17, 2014, 05:13:21 AM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?
  Sourc
Drat.

Nah, your back in 1956! Source: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/minimumwage/a/history-minimum-wage.htm

For me, my $AU1.80ish  gets me a Female back to the 1970's in Australia, I think?  Source is: http://cbe.anu.edu.au/research/papers/cehspapers/SP07_008.pdf
and i'm not sure on the hours.
When I started working, I was paid $25 a week - before equal pay (only just, they were changing the workforce at the factory so that every job only had men or women in it, so they would still pay women poor wages when equal pay came in - and I was probably on a junior's wage - but $AU1.80 and I would have felt RICH!!

I'm not sure precicely when you started working, but if you look at page 11, in 1970 the minimum wages for females were between 36.59 and 44.19, rates rose significantly over the next decade.  I wouldn't be surprised if the percentages of the national miniumum wage haven't changed since then so assuming you were 18 in 1970 then it would be around $25 for the $36.69 wage.  I'm not sure how many hours per week were in those wages though...  There is also a significant difference between 1973 and 1974 for both males and females.
No, about the mid 70's - 74?? As I said, it was just before equal pay, and men got a lot more than women. Looked it up - 1972 (the internet must be wrong - I was too young then - must have been 1975). 40 hour week (8 hour day is what labour day is all about in each state). Now that you mention it, I think junior rates went up after that (junior was until 21). And $25 was what I got in my pocket after tax. This was the summer holidays, so I was still at school - worked at Red Tulip factory - the only native speaker of English on the factory floor, trying to get enough money to pay for University.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2014, 02:57:57 PM by deborah »

BFGirl

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #21 on: May 17, 2014, 05:46:32 AM »
Hope the government doesn't decide the little green employees need to pay SS and Medicare ;)

AlanStache

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #22 on: May 17, 2014, 05:52:41 AM »
love the idea.  Not 100% sure we should be using the Safe Withdrawal Rate and not total average market return rate of 7-8%.  The extra percents are still 'working' for you, you are just not using them right away.  I see that the SWR is comparable to owning someones wages making a given rate indefinitely.  Maybe both would be of interest.

Also 40hr/week*52weeks minus 2 weeks holiday = 2000 hr/year.  Does not change the basic coolness of the idea.

Random fun math:  365days * 24hr/day = 8760 hr in a year.   2000 / 8760 = 22% of your life at work. add in a 30 minute commute, am sure that gets over 25% of the year.

Spend less - save more - hit FIRE earlier. 

Time to go back to doing the math they pay me to do...

Russ

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #23 on: May 17, 2014, 06:00:12 AM »
woah! so I basically gave myself a $1/hr raise last year, sweet!

Travis

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #24 on: May 17, 2014, 06:03:08 AM »
Hope the government doesn't decide the little green employees need to pay SS and Medicare ;)

Are you paying taxes on your passive income? If so, there's your answer.

ender

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #25 on: May 17, 2014, 07:15:28 AM »
Another thing to think about is that $30,000 cell phone you are carrying around.

$100 a month phone contract is $1200 a year which takes a stache of $30,000 to support @4% SWR.

This is a great way to think about it!

CarDude

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #26 on: May 17, 2014, 07:52:38 AM »
Another thing to think about is that $30,000 cell phone you are carrying around.

$100 a month phone contract is $1200 a year which takes a stache of $30,000 to support @4% SWR.

I know I've seen Jacob write from this perspective back in the ERE days, and it's a good mental exercise.

arebelspy

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #27 on: May 17, 2014, 08:04:57 AM »
Let's not get into wage differences between men and women in this post.  Go start a thread if you want to discuss that, thanks.  :)

Also 40hr/week*52weeks minus 2 weeks holiday = 2000 hr/year.  Does not change the basic coolness of the idea.

Yeah, I posted why I chose 1700 hours - that's how much the average American works according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve.  If you have a minimum wage worker to work for you full time and add to your stache, it's much more likely they work closer to that average (of ~32 hrs/week, every week) than the 2000 hours you post.  :)

But if you have a larger stache and are wanting to compare that to a professional who does work a lot, you may want to divide by 2000.

You can always argue back and forth over precisely which number to use (maybe your worker is a professional that works closer to 60 hours a week.. maybe they have 3 vacation weeks instead of 2.. but they don't use them), but I figured the amount an average American works was a good number to use as a basis of comparison versus normal a "hourly wage" rate that we hear.

woah! so I basically gave myself a $1/hr raise last year, sweet!

That's awesome, I like breaking it down by time period like that.  :)

Another thing to think about is that $30,000 cell phone you are carrying around.

$100 a month phone contract is $1200 a year which takes a stache of $30,000 to support @4% SWR.

This is a great way to think about it!

Yeah, this is a pretty common way to think about stuff in FI, pretty sure MMM has mentioned it as well and probably YMOYL, it's not new.  OTOH I hadn't thought about my stache working an extra job for me (I had in terms of what is it earning passively per year, per hour, day, minute, etc., but only in terms of every minute.. not in terms of working hours) until the post linked in the OP, so I thought this was a neat, separate idea worth its own post.  :)

FWIW - 30k cell phone - WELL worth it.  An extra 3 months or so of working to have a COMPUTER with the INTERNET in my pocket forever?!  Hell yes please.  (Although you can do it significantly cheaper, so I'd do that.. but if that $100/mo was the cheapest, it'd still be well worth it.)  :)
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hybrid

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #28 on: May 17, 2014, 11:06:57 AM »
My dollars are lazy spoiled Americans, and I keep threatening to replace them with yuan if they don't get their shit together.

LalsConstant

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #29 on: May 17, 2014, 12:46:14 PM »
rofl - this exercise is slightly depressing for some of us XD

But the point is that any positive amount on this calculation is so much better than any negative amount is a great one.

milla

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #30 on: May 17, 2014, 01:10:24 PM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?

Drat.

Hopefully your crappy restaurant patrons tip well. : )

Working on it! This exercise is actually encouraging because, as someone said somewhere, at least it's not negative!

hoodedfalcon

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #31 on: May 17, 2014, 01:18:53 PM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?

Drat.

Hopefully your crappy restaurant patrons tip well. : )

Working on it! This exercise is actually encouraging because, as someone said somewhere, at least it's not negative!

Milla, I think our soldiers are co-workers. And yes, at least it's not negative....

kkbmustang

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #32 on: May 17, 2014, 05:17:46 PM »
I will play. Because this is a fun game. Only counting liquid investments (not closely held stock or real estate), the Hubs and I have a full time average worker earning about $8.25/hour.

johnintaiwan

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #33 on: May 17, 2014, 05:54:29 PM »
So far I think I only have a panhandler working for me. On second thought, panhandlers probably make more per hour

Runge

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #34 on: May 17, 2014, 06:44:24 PM »
Well...I'm pulling in a measly $0.245/hr. But I did graduate school two years ago and just bought a house... Liquid assets are relatively low at the moment. But it's POSITIVE!

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #35 on: May 18, 2014, 01:28:40 AM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?

Drat.

Hopefully your crappy restaurant patrons tip well. : )

Working on it! This exercise is actually encouraging because, as someone said somewhere, at least it's not negative!

Milla, I think our soldiers are co-workers. And yes, at least it's not negative....

4 cents an hour... Yep... $0.04 per hour!!! At least it's no longer negative!!!!!!!!!!!!!

agent_clone

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #36 on: May 18, 2014, 03:50:06 AM »
Hmm, yes I'm wondering how home loans are calculated into this.  One the one hand you have capital in the home, and potential capital gains.  On the other hand you have a loan you need to pay off (currently around 5-6% in Australia with an average of about 8%).  Not precisely the same as the student loan position, but still a question.

Cheddar Stacker

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #37 on: May 18, 2014, 05:44:40 AM »
4 cents an hour... Yep... $0.04 per hour!!! At least it's no longer negative!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Glad to see you are out of the hole Mazzinator. I was waiting for that post in your journal. Congrats!

DocCyane

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #38 on: May 18, 2014, 05:50:00 AM »
Fun game!

My green soldiers make $10.85/hr.

As their boss, I need to work harder in the next 5 years to give them a raise. They deserve it.

Paul der Krake

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #39 on: May 18, 2014, 08:02:39 AM »
My dollars are lazy spoiled Americans, and I keep threatening to replace them with yuan if they don't get their shit together.
You Sir are upper management material.

I keep my soldiers in cages with all sorts of age restrictions. They can't get out without the government chopping off body parts as an early exit tax.


arebelspy

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #40 on: May 18, 2014, 08:02:55 AM »
Hmm, yes I'm wondering how home loans are calculated into this.  One the one hand you have capital in the home, and potential capital gains.  On the other hand you have a loan you need to pay off (currently around 5-6% in Australia with an average of about 8%).  Not precisely the same as the student loan position, but still a question.

Take your total liquid invested portfolio, find the passive income, subtract interest paid?

Or just make it easy (it's just a rough, for fun calculation anyways) and use net worth, which means any mortgage/equity should be factored in already.
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samburger

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #41 on: May 18, 2014, 09:08:36 AM »
My little clan of dollars makes a measly $0.59/hr. That's about 1% of what I make per hour.

But hey, just six months ago my dollars didn't make me anything! I'll take .59/hr for now.

SunshineGirl

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #42 on: May 18, 2014, 09:16:52 AM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?

Drat.
Sorry, servers made $2/14/hour back in the 90's. I know, cuz I was one of them!

mjs111

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #43 on: May 18, 2014, 11:14:19 AM »
FWIW - 30k cell phone - WELL worth it.  An extra 3 months or so of working to have a COMPUTER with the INTERNET in my pocket forever?!  Hell yes please.  (Although you can do it significantly cheaper, so I'd do that.. but if that $100/mo was the cheapest, it'd still be well worth it.)  :)

Agreed.  Whenever I use my cell phone to guide me to a destination, look up information, and of course call people no matter where I am, I tend to think that "this is what money is made for." YMMV.

Another thing to thing to keep in mind is that making $x an hour off of investments vs. regular income is the tax angle: you generally get to keep more from the money made from investments.  No FICA tax and likely lower overall tax rate (or even deferred in IRA's/401(k's)) due to favorable treatment of dividends and long term cap gains.

DoubleDown

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #44 on: May 18, 2014, 02:01:51 PM »
I just did this very mental exercise a month ago while on a walk.

$25/hour (from investments)
$35/hour (investments + pension in 9 years)
$50/hour (all of the above + Soc. Sec. in ~20 years)

Yes, I'm counting some of those chickens before they're hatched, but I consider them very safe so I include them in the future. Add in your own Soc. Security or other future benefits you've already earned/accrued, it might make you feel even richer.

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #45 on: May 18, 2014, 04:09:43 PM »
I'm right there with the Gunslinger dude - around $31/hr.

milla

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #46 on: May 19, 2014, 02:11:55 PM »
Mine makes a puny $1/hr. Maybe it's a server at a crappy restaurant in the 90's?

Drat.
Sorry, servers made $2/14/hour back in the 90's. I know, cuz I was one of them!

I'm happy for the 90's you. I'm sad for my soldiers.

Thegoblinchief

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #47 on: May 19, 2014, 04:37:32 PM »
-$.04 per hour. Cool exercise. My dollars will hopefully be gainfully employed by the end of the year.

a.g

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #48 on: May 21, 2014, 07:58:37 AM »
Right now I have expensive American employee's, which are losing me $0.33 an hour. Going forward I plan to outsource, and every year I plan to give my worker's a $2.45 raise, which means:

In 2015 I will be employing 1 full time Indian employee
In 2016 I will be employing 1 full time Chinese employee
In 2020 I will be employing 1 full time New Zealand employee, or nearly 7 full time Indian employees
and so on and so on..

Quite the little operation I'm setting up. (this was a simplistic take, ignoring compounding. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage)
« Last Edit: May 21, 2014, 08:19:42 AM by a.g »

dude

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Re: What are your soldiers (dollars) paid per hour?
« Reply #49 on: May 21, 2014, 08:19:50 AM »
I just did this very mental exercise a month ago while on a walk.

$25/hour (from investments)
$35/hour (investments + pension in 9 years)
$50/hour (all of the above + Soc. Sec. in ~20 years)

Yes, I'm counting some of those chickens before they're hatched, but I consider them very safe so I include them in the future. Add in your own Soc. Security or other future benefits you've already earned/accrued, it might make you feel even richer.

Somewhat similar numbers but only 5 years until the pension . . .