Hard Working Poor People And A $30 Million Dollar Lesson

I recently wrote about the Karens and Karls of the world feeling entitled and I had a reader ask a great question about the hard-working poor people.

The World Doesn’t Owe You Sh*t

“… why are there so many hard working poor people? Should they just work harder?” — Scott-Ryan Abt

It’s shitty that there are people out there busting their asses and only making enough to get by. Working harder can possibly help them, but to what extent?

The Lesson of 86,400

I heard a story from Dean Graziosi at an event about 6 years ago about the number 86,400; I don’t necessarily know exactly where it came from, but here it is.

A bank credits your account with $86,400 each day for you to use however you see fit. At the start of the next day, the bank resets your account to $86,400 and doesn’t carry anything over from the previous day you failed to use. Whatever you didn’t use is lost and you can’t borrow from the funds of tomorrow. Whatever you invest with that money is a part of you as long as you continue to invest. What will you do with it?

86,400 is the number of seconds in 24 hours. Everyone gets the same amount no matter what. No one has an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to this number.

Let’s see where this money goes.

Balance: $86,400

$21,600 to $28,800 for Sleep

This is a hefty amount. Many people need 6 hours ($21,600) and others need 8 hours or more ($28,800+). I just checked my Whoop data and I got 6:24hrs. On average, I’m sleeping about 6.5 hours per night ($23,400). I love my sleep and sometimes on the weekends I will sleep longer, but that’s me.

Let’s take the bigger number to account for the average person.

Balance: $57,600

$7,800 for Commuting

Let’s say you work every single day, weekends and holidays included, and travel 1 hour each way to and from work for 2 total hours.

Balance: $49,800

$28,800 to $36,000 for Work

You’re quickly chipping away at the balance and you’ve put in 8 hours of work… maybe 10 hours. A lot of people have long work days or even work two jobs, so this number can go up even more; but, we’ll keep it to about 10 hours.

Balance $13,800

$10,800 for Eating, Family Time, & Other

We’re gonna say that you have a family that you’re supporting. You need to eat, spend time with your family, and do other things like some chores and take a shower. That’s about 3 hours of your time… could be shorter, but we’ll keep the 3 hours.

Balance $3,000

$30 Million Dollars — WTF???

You have a balance of $3,000… that’s exactly 50 minutes. Now, as far as time goes, this can be a very short period of time or it can drag on for what seems like infinity if you’re doing something you don’t like. Look at that time as a small number all you want, but you’re pretty freaking close to being worth $3,600 per hour.

For those that have a different work-life; let’s say you work 8 hours a day for 40 hours at some company for 50 weeks and you take 2 weeks of vacation. You will be working for 2000 hours and your balance would be much higher. Using some of the numbers above you would have a balance of $10,200. That’s almost 3 hours of free time.

You’re still worth $3,600 per hour.

Now to think bigger; multiply $3,600 by 8,600 (number of hours in a calendar year); you and everyone else are worth $30,960,000 per year.

Build The Right Mindset

$30 Million is a massive number and we are all worth that. So why are we not fulfilling our potential and claiming that amount every year? It has nothing to do with race, nationality, or environment, but more to do with education and mindset. I hear some people complain that they don’t have the money to learn a new skill or hire a mentor to get them where others are. You don’t need money to learn a new skill or hire a mentor; you can get by with a library card… and that’s free.

You have an hour or 3 hours; borrow a book from the library that teaches you something. You can borrow a book, audio, or video from the library for 21 days. If you read on average 250 words per minute and borrow a book that’s about 150 pages, it’ll take you roughly 150 minutes or 2.5 hours based on 250 words per page. For a week, you may have 7 to 21 hours of free time. Let’s go with these numbers and say it takes 2.5 hours per 150-page book, you can get through 2.5 books per week on the low end. These books can teach you about computers, marketing, sales, psychology, communication, and finance. The authors of these books are your mentors that you can go back to time and time again.

These new skills can afford you a new job in sales at a car dealership or work for a marketing company making at least 50% more than you were before. Once you see what’s possible with an hour per day or more and you see how much “money” the time bank is crediting your account, you’ll start to think differently. Your mindset will be different and in 6 months of investing in your education and mindset, you will be a completely different person.

You would be able to go to sleep knowing you used all $86,400 that the time bank credited to your account.

Final Words

I didn’t plan on getting deep into the numbers, but it helped to paint the picture that everyone is starting with the same amount of time. No one has an advantage or disadvantage, but over time with the right mindset; anyone can build the life that they deserve. This means that the hard-working poor people can become the hard-working lower class, then the hard-working middle class, and eventually the hard-working upper class.

There are people out there that were homeless or poor and through focused intentional and disciplined work, learned something new, applied it, and built amazing lives for themselves. They got to a point where they can charge way more than $3,600 per hour for their time. Really, anyone’s worth will never go below $3,600 per hour or $30 Million per year; but it can only go up from there. It’s how we invest that time/money.

What are your thoughts? Do these numbers make sense to you?