The Costs of Luxury

Sorry for last week's absence...huge event at church that I was in charge of.  Back to the real world this week.

Yesterday afternoon my mom took my two oldest kids for the afternoon.  She took them to a local playground and they had a blast.  I had a little luxury...a Sunday afternoon basically free.  (When you have three kids, only one seems "free.")  I spent it catching up on my favorite restaurant makeover shows and Gail Vaz-Oxlade's newest show, "Princess." 


Credit

 The basic point of the show is for "princesses" - those who think they deserve the best of everything...and get it - to be cut off and learn to live on their own without going into debt.  If they succeed for 6 weeks and complete all of her "challenges" they win up to $5000. 

(Don't even bother trying to sign up to be on it...unless you live in Canada.)

But one of her points this weekend was eye-opening to me.

She had one of the princesses calculate how many hours of work it would require to buy their luxuries - purses; shoes; travel, eating out, etc...  But that wasn't the eye opener, she had them calculate it using their disposable income.

Basically, the girls would have to do their budget for the month, and (for simplicity) let's say they'd have $60 left over...yes, for the whole month.  An average, 40-hour/week, employee works 160 hours a month.  60/160 = $.375 of disposable income per hour.  Meaning, if they wanted a $400 pair of boots, it would require that they work 1067 hours.  That's 26 weeks...or half of the YEAR!!!

Not many people would work half a year for a pair of shoes.              

(Me...if it were the right pair...just maybe.   Lol.)

So I started doing that with random things around my house.  Not bragging, but just being honest, when you're debt-free it doesn't take long to pay off little things like a night out or a new dress. 

So I started doing that with the big things, Christmas, our Florida/Disney vacation we're planning in May 2012. 

And wow...it's going to take a while to work for those things.   More than a month is a lot to me..

More than two months is an eternity.  (What can I say...I have ADD.  Much longer than that and I lose interest.)

Anyhow, I just thought that was a neat little challenge that I would pass along.  When you're planning that weekend away or the new appliances, it is eye opening to see how long you have to work for it to be able to pay for it.