One money idea I've been coming back to a lot recently is the “buck-an-hour” rule of thumb for entertainment. I ran across it on J Money's site.
It's a simple rule in principle and practice: When buying entertainment, the amount of entertainment time should work out to a buck an hour, or better.
My corollary to this is that for families it should work out to a buck per person-hour or better. So if all three of us are enjoying something, that counts triple.
Here are some examples.
We subscribe to Disney Plus, which costs $70/year. By the buck-an-hour rule, we should be enjoying Disney Plus for seventy hours each year or more. Three months into our year, we've already blown past this.
We also subscribe to Spotify Premium for $15/month, which covers all of our accounts. I alone listen to Spotify several hours a night, so we're good there too.
Other services were big fails to the buck-an-hour test. We had cable for years and we only watched TV a handful of times. I remember wanting to watch the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics. It had been so long since we had turned on the cable that I didn't realize that we needed a digital converter box! We ended up missing it at the time. Doh!
The limiting factor in all of this isn't money
We've done well by the buck-an-hour rule on some of our purchases, and lousy on others. It happens.
Today I was reminded of this Jim Rohn quote:
Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.
Jim Rohn
Broadly, this talks to the inescapable scarcity of our time. We only get so much of it, and thus it's important to use it wisely. Regarding entertainment, we could discuss how it impacts legacy and other important facets of live.
But applied more narrowly to the buck-an-hour rule, though, it reminded me that there's only so much time for entertainment and hence, there's a semi-hard limit on the amount for spending mindfully on entertainment.
How much time to be entertained?
Let's estimate the amount of time we realistically have to be entertained. I'm part of a family of three, so let's go with that.
I have a 9-to-5 and in principle shouldn't be entertained at my job (at least as far as what I personally have to pay for). So let's say that on workdays I could ostensibly be entertained up to 4 hours a day (work 8, sleep 8, be entertained 50% of what's left). Whether I actually end up paying for entertainment for that much is a separate question, but let's just say for now that I can.
On the weekend, let's say I get down to the entertainment business and entertain myself 50% of my waking hours. That's 8 hours a day, or 16 hours per weekend. Adding everything up, that gives me 36 hours of entertainment per week, or 144 hours per month.
Now let's go to my wife. She probably carries more weight of the family responsibilities than I do (thanks hon!) but let's simplify and say that she puts in an 8-hour day like I do, and has the same freedom on the weekend. That gives her time for entertainment also at 144 hours per month.
Now, to our daughter. She has school during the week and homework, so probably she has a similar four hours a weeknight for entertainment. On the weekend, let's give her 75% or 12.5 hours, for 25 hours a weekend. This gives a grand total of 45 hours a week, or 180 hours a month.
Adding everything up: 468 hours per month. That means we should spend no more than (about) $500/month according to the buck-an-hour rule.
Some comments on the $500/month for a family of three
Let's comment on some aspects of this.
Do things together!
First, adding up the individual number of hours to get the total assumes that all of the entertainment is independent. Let's say, for example, that I liked science fiction, my wife likes home and garden, and my daughter likes Pokemon, and no one else in our family liked any of these things. That would be worst-case; we'd all be paying for our entertainment individually.
The way around this is to spend money on entertainment that more than one person can enjoy. That's how things work with our Disney+ subscription. We all enjoy that to some extent. My daughter and I watched both seasons of The Mandalorian together. So every hour of that series essentially counted twice toward our buck-an-hour.
The takeaway from this is to do things together so that what you do spend on entertainment counts for more.
Consider one-time purchases
Most of the examples that I talked about earlier in the article were recurring charges: pay per month or pay per year. I totally ignored one-time purchases.
A few nights ago we played Boggle for the first time in a while. We got the game years ago, probably at a yard sale for a buck. We used to play it a lot more than we do now, but we've definitely blown away our buck-an-hour entertainment value from this game.
One-time purchases have a threshold for “winning” the buck-an-hour rule. Once you cross that threshold, it just gets better, and approaches free.
A board game is an easy win if your family enjoys that. So are books and DVDs, especially if they're bought used.
Less is more
Five hundred dollars a month for a family of three is still a lot. Irrespective of the buck-an-hour rule … that's still a lot of time to spend on entertainment!
This wasn't meant to be a call to spend that much time on entertainment. It doesn't need to be that much.
Probably nowhere close to that much.
This gets back to the broader implications of time vs. money. We only get so much time. Are we spending all of it, or even just too much of it, consuming rather than producing? Are we becoming all we can be, or are we nothing more than the means to success for those who are?
These are important questions. $500/month isn't a requirement. It's a limit, and a high one at that.
To summarize …
- There's only so much time for everything, and that's more important than any price tag on it.
- What time you do have and are paying for, spend it together to maximize the time/money tradeoff.
- One-time purchases can trump recurring charges.
- Maybe take a hard look at how much you're being entertained, and what you can contribute instead.
