I live in southern Merrylande and I used to work in VA, just across the Nice Bridge - I’ll let you play with Google maps if you care. I have a credit union account there in Dahlgren but since I’ve been retired from there 10 years and since I’ve paid off the loan I had there, I have no reason to keep the account open.
At the moment, there’s around $40 in there. Crossing the Nice Bridge requires a $4.50 toll, and it’s something over 25 miles from home to the credit union. Oh, and I have neither checks nor a debit card to access the funds - I’d have to go there in person to claim them. Frankly, $40 is hardly worth the time, gas, and toll to claim.
I emailed and asked if there’s a way to close it out remotely, but if there’s not, I’ll probably just let it die. I was thinking that I’d deal with the hassle for $100, but not for $40. Hence the question, perhaps phrased as: what’s your time worth to you?
Yeah. I get reimbursement checks from insurance from where I work (we are self insured). Sometimes they are ridiculous, like 80 cents. About the cost it takes me to go from my house to a paved road. Then it’s another 15 miles to my bank.
Work gets annoyed if I don’t cash them. It screws up their books.
Last time the message was “Please cash this, and don’t spend it all in one place” So at least they have a sense of humor about it.
Here is exactly how I always answer this kind of question:
What is your hourly salary? Or, what do you think your fair hourly wages ought to be?
How long will this project take, including all driving and stops?
Multiply those two figures.
If your net profit after expenses (like tolls and gas) is more than (Wages x Hours), then you are ahead of the game; you invested some time, and got more than your usual salary for it. Congratulations.
But if the profit is less than (Wages x Hours), then you settled for a quick temp job that paid less than you deserve. You can do it if you want - after all it IS real money - but be aware of what’s happening.
By the way, I do the same kind of calculation in many other situations. For example, I’m driving somewhere, and I can use the freeway, or I can save 10 minutes if I pay $1 on the toll road.
I might say, “My time is worth more than $6 per hour. Therefore, I would rather pay the one dollar, to get 10 additional minutes of free time.”
Or, I might say, “Here is a job that pays $6 per hour. I would usually insist on more money than that, but it’s a sure thing and I don’t have to put up with an obnoxious boss, so I’ll drive the extra ten minutes. A dollar saved is a dollar earned.”
I’ve never liked those calculations unless they actually interfered with your work time where you could have been making X dollars per hour. My hourly time — though I don’t work 40 hours per week — is quite high and that calculation would have me way overvaluing my idle time. If I’m not doing anything anyway, my time is pretty much just my expenses plus, I dunno, 20 to 50 bucks unless I really have something else I could be doing.
Sometimes it’s the principle of the situation. I once missed two days of work to contest a parking ticket. When my case was called, the judge didn’t really listen, he just offered to drop the fine to $10 in exchange for a guilty plea. I said no. The case was carried over to another day. I returned and the judge (a different dude) listened and found me not guilty.
I also once pressed charges and testified (missing half a day of work) over a shoplifted item worth $8. The woman was found guilty.
If not for the principle involved, I would have blown off both situations.
For $20 I will barely even worry about it. Unless there was, as kayaker said, some other issue.
I have some train tickets that I can’t use. I also can’t get them refunded, according to the rules and regulations. I have no problem giving them to somebody else, but I hate the idea that they will be “wasted”.
Which is silly, because they aren’t worth $20. I’m not always logical.
I used to take the longer way because I actually got paid for that time to go far. I had options of driving or taking the train, the train could take an extra 2 hours or more, but that was legit 2 hours billed (at a relatively high hourly rate) as it was considered a reasonable option (and sometimes I could get work done on the train which was billable to someone else and I was not expected to use the train time to work on the original billable project). So I was able to bill for time on one and work on another.
However sometimes my time was worth more then that and I took the quicker way.
So I disagree with the analogy that it should be comparable to how much one makes as the determining factor. A factor yes, but not the entire thing, as work is not my life and I would rather make living life the determining factor.
I worked there 10 years - there’s nothing I’d consider worth seeing, nor are there any restaurants in Dahlgren worth visiting. I would drive there to meet up with my ex-boss, but he and I have been talking about that for at least 6 years, so I don’t see it happening.
We’ll just see what the CU says about remote closing.
As for a dollar value for my time, before I retired I was a senior engineer so I made more than $40/hr. As a retired drain on society, my time is priceless. Spousal unit is still working so we won’t miss the $40, especially since I mostly forgot we had that account.
I stoop down to pick up a penny lying on the sidewalk or street. Considering both the time to pick up the penny and the time to spend the penny this comes out to less than minimum wage.
I’m almost certain you can. When I moved to California I closed my account at my old East Coast bank over the phone, and they mailed me a check with the funds.
I remember going thru this sort of calculation years back when I had a sizable commute and was using gasbuddy. I soon realized that the savings would have to be pretty significant for me to deviate much from my normal routes.
When I was younger and poorer, I would go to great lengths to avoid toll roads. Now, with a transponder. I rarely think of it.
For me, it’s about the unpleasantness of the task more than the time involved. Some parts of my city are a nightmare to drive through; others are quite pleasant. Some errands are enjoyable; others I would spend a lot of money to avoid. I could see a trip across a bridge to my old little credit union being a fun outing, while a shorter trip to a big bank where I’d have to wait in a long line to talk to someone who hated their life wouldn’t be worth the $40. But hey, hard to beat a check in the mail!
The back problems are probably worse than time lost. If there were a giant warehouse full of pennies, and you could have as many as you wanted as long as you bent over to pick each one up individually, how long would you last?
Don’t forget that saved money is after-tax earnings. Also don’t forget wear and tear on your car.
There’s a regular trip I take where I spend about 15 minutes to avoid a $7 toll. It’s not quite worth it just given my salary, but it’s not that far off and it’s not usually time I’d get back anyway.
Spousal unit is still working so we won’t miss the $40, especially since I mostly forgot we had that account.
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