In all the talk about the REASON to start a home based business or online business, such as funding your retirement account or paying down debt or just living better and obtaining tax deductions, there’s not much talk about HOW to do all that.
This excellent article from SavingsAdvice.com is different in that it’s concrete:How Dumping TV Allowed Me to Quit My Job, Create an Online Business and Fund My Retirement Account
I especially liked the line “Did you know that watching TV can cost you $1 million dollars or more in lost productivity over your lifetime?” (paraphrase). And basically his viewing habits weren’t that bad – about 3 hours per day.
Here’s a quote that’s worth pondering too:
If you want to know why you don’t have enough money, the first question to ask yourself is how much time do you spend watching TV? It’s probably a lot more than you ever realised. While most people focus on the cost of cable when they think of the price of watching TV, I would argue that a far more costly aspect is the opportunity cost — the things you could be doing during the time that you’re actually watching TV.
To put it into perspective, if you watch an average of 31.5 hours of TV each week (which the average person in the US does) and you value your time at minimum wage of $5.85 an hour, you are spending nearly $800 a month ($798.53) to watch TV. That comes to nearly $10,000 ($9582.30) a year. I would imagine that most people reading this value their time well above minimum wage, so the cost is likely several times that number. When you look at it from that perspective, watching TV is an extremely expensive and financial draining habit to have.
Holly - The Work at Home Woman on May 1st, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Wow – that is amazing, 1 million dollars! I totally agree, TV is a huge time waster. I think it can be a nice escape from reality, but nobody needs more than a couple hours a week. Use the time for something more productive and rewarding.
Don on May 5th, 2009 at 9:02 am
If looked at from a reduction in productivity tv is certainly a menace to society and individuals alike.
I most gave tv up 10 years ago. I still do watch my sports. I’ve no interest in most of the garbage. I’ve developed an affininty though for 24 but even then I only see three four episodes a year. I catch up on the computer.
Nice when numbers are inserted it is easy to see that tv gets in the way of to many people.
Interesting
DJ Nelson on May 6th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I’ve become a bit anti-tv myself. I just don’t like sitting around feeling like I am wasting time. Additionally I have a problem with most of the content that is seen as acceptable but that’s a story for another day.