Thursday, September 17, 2009

Picking Up Pennies


An article on WiseBread asked readers if they picked up fallen pennies, and if it's even worth your time? This got me thinking......What is my time worth.


I know that if a neighbor offered to pay me $5.00 to mow his lawn, I would probably tell him to take a hike. But if he offered to pay me $100.00, I might just do it. This tells me that Time and Effort are important factors.


As far as penny reconnaissance, testing these factors was quite simple. With a stop watch I timed myself picking up a penny. I after a couple of tries from a standing position it took about 2 seconds to pick a penny off the floor. So for 2 seconds of my time, I earned $0.01. That equates to a wage of about $18.00 an hour. According to Monster.com that is the equivalent wages of a sushi restaurant supervisor in San Jose, CA. On the other hand if you pick up a dime, you are earning the same wages as a highly qualified Neurosurgeon, or about $374K a year. Granted you are only working for a few seconds at a time, but I don't know many people that would pass up those kind of wages. Here a calculation breakdown:


$0.01 @ 2 seconds = $18/hour
$0.05 @ 2 seconds = $90/hour
$0.10 @ 2 seconds = $180/hour
$0.25 @ 2 seconds = $450/hour
$1.00 @ 2 seconds = $1,800/hour
$5.00 @ 2 seconds = $9,000/hour
$10.00 @ 2 seconds = $18,000/hour
$20.00 @ 2 seconds = $36,000/hour
$50.00 @ 2 seconds = $90,000/hour
$100.00 @ 2 seconds = $180,000/hour


After seeing the results of these calculations, I will always pick up dropped change.

Too bad I only pick up "heads", I'm superstitious like that.

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