So many Americans don’t value their own time. Are you one of them?

Let me illustrate my point. Let’s say you’re heading home, but you need to get some gas. You’re coming up on a stop light that just turned red. On each side of the road sits a gas station, waiting for your business. You can either turn right (on red) or wait and turn left. You’re about to turn right to get gas when you notice that station’s prices:

Then you look to your left and see the other station’s sign:

(for argument sake let’s assume you purchase the regular gas, not plus/premium)

Do you:

A) Turn right on red and pay the higher gas price, $3.29
or
B) Wait for the left turn light and save money by paying $3.27 instead

If you answered B, you’re either an idiot, or you don’t value your time AT ALL.

Let me explain with a little math, Landon Swan style….

Assumptions:

• Your car is fairly average, holding 16 gallons and getting 20 miles to the gallon
• You will have to wait 1 min 30 sec to turn left to go into the gas station on the left
• You will have to wait 1 min 30 sec to turn left out of the gas station back towards home
• Your car is almost empty, we’ll use 15 gallons as the fill-up amount

So the station on the right costs 2 cents more per gallon. At 15 gallons, that’s 30 cents. However, it saves you 3 minutes in waiting time. So the question is, would you rather have 30 cents or 3 minutes?

I’ll give you a hint, if you pick 30 cents, you are valuing your time at less than $6 per hour!
(FYI if you make $12,000 per year working 40 hours a week, you’re making about $6 per hour. If you’re reading my blog odds are you make far more than that!)
Then take into consideration that on average, an idling car uses 1 mile’s worth of gas every 2 minutes. So in the 3 minutes you waited to turn left twice, you used 1.5 miles worth of gas. With our assumptions, that is 0.075 gallons, which at the price of $3.27 is 24.5 cents. So now your 30 cents of savings are actually down to 5.5 cents of savings. Calculate that with the 3 minutes it cost you and now you’re valuing your time at LESS THAN $1.10 PER HOUR.

Am I saying you should always just pay more for gas? No. I am saying you should just get gas, whichever one is closer/easier/faster. Given free-markets’ ability to keep prices close, the price difference will never justify waiting more than 10 or 15 seconds to ’save’ money.

So please, please consider your own time value. If you value your time at less than $6/ hour, you should go work 80 hours a week at minimum-wage. It will be worth your time. Sorry if that’s harsh but come on….