How Many Hours Does Your Home Cost You?

Today I want to talk about the idea of being house poor.

This isn’t about people who don’t have a nice home, or a home at all: that’s another story. This is about people who have a nice home, but one that’s so expensive that they spend their whole time working to pay for the home, and have very little time to actually enjoy it. In fact, they probably don’t really own it: the bank owns it.

I remember when I was just out of college and had started working, I just took my stuff from my parent's house and I moved it to this apartment because I wanted my freedom. But after a few months, I became kind of dissatisfied, because I was hardly spending any time in the apartment.

I was outside in the world, enjoying life at the beach, hanging out with friends, and I realized that I really didn't need a two-bedroom apartment: a one-bedroom apartment would be plenty. Sure, the extra room was nice, but I really just wanted to be outside more, or even in my house, having time to enjoy it with my friends.

Your House vs Your Budget

I'd encourage you to look at your expenses, and look at how much it costs you to live where you do. Let's say you own a house, or you and the bank own a house: how much does the mortgage cost? Plus the property taxes, the utilities, the insurance, the homeowner's association fees, and so on.

Take a look at all those different things, and consider how many dollars all that cost you after tax. Then, work out how many hours it takes you to make that after-tax income.

Let's say you make $50 an hour after taxes, and your home is costing you $2,000 per month. Well, $2,000 dollars divided by $50 is 40 hours, so your home is costing you 40 hours per month.

If you make $25 an hour, then it’s costing you twice as much time: 80 hours. That's a lot more!

Getting My Priorities Wrong

A lot of this is just about considering how important it is for you to have an awesome house compared with and balanced with having the time to enjoy it.

I've seen so many people do what I did at one point. I was putting so many things in my house, but I was working so hard to get the things that I didn’t have time to keep my social life going. I didn't have as much time to spend with my friends to hang out, so I had all these cool things in my house, but nobody was coming over.

I encourage you to just look at what you’re spending on your house, or planning on spending on a house, and consider what it is that you really want most from your home. What are you looking to get from it? Then, you can think about how to get that in a way that allows you the most freedom to enjoy time outside of work to be able to enjoy other life experiences as well.

The Next Steps

If you want to learn more about how to create your own 4-Day Work Week, go to 4dayworkshop.com, where you can learn about our live events, the 4-Day Work Week Entrepreneur Academy, where we spend 2 days focused on creating the framework, and the Game Plan, for you to set up your own 4-Day Workweek Lifestyle.

We do hot seats where we focus on your business and your situation. We do exercises where we share ideas with each other, and we help build a network and a community of people that support each other. This live event is supported by an online program, a Facebook group, and regular face-to-face meetings over Zoom calls, where we support each other and help each other create this lifestyle.

We have a community of people already doing this, and the 4-Day Workshop is the best place for you to go to get started and to get doing this.

As always, I look forward to helping you make more money in less time, do what you do best, so you can better enjoy your friends, your family, and your life. I look forward to seeing you at one of our workshops.