How much is your time worth?

So you think yo uare brilliant. You have aced your high school exams, you went to a good college, easily procured a spot for urself with a top uni, worked hard and graduated with good grades, secured yourself a job with a top MNC, and now rake in relatively big bucks, as much as it took your parents 10 years to make when they were your age.

Great. You've achieved what you've always wanted.

Now, if you were in a hugely satisfying job, and got immense satisfaction from teaching little kids, thats GREAT. The problem is, what if you are not quite sure why you are in your current job, and you cannot say with conviction that you love this job, and there are days where you just tell urself it isnt worth it. What if you are getting tired by all the deadlines, quotas, stress, pressures, targets, KPIs, meetings, projects, deliverables, presentations, business cases, explanations, reports, politics, being cooped up in an office while gazing wistfully at the sun outside? Did you really go through the last 20 years of education for...this?

You spend hours and hours a day at work. You work from 8, 9 til 8, 9. Not much time for much else. Can't dictate working hours. Have to put up with other people's moods and attitudes.

On the other hand, you could quit, and set up your own business. Open a restaurant! Sell something simple, even if it is just chicken rice or bak kut teh. In M'sia, you can keep your overheads low by not emphasizing the packaging, because we just care for the taste. You can be your own boss. You dictate your working hours. Don't feel like working today? Feel like starting later? Go ahead! Hire someone else to run your shop for you, to collect the money. So, while your shop and hence you are raking in the cash, you're out there enjoying the sun and a good book.

That operates on the concept of passive income. For us in our 9-5, we have to work to pull in the cash. Once we stop, we dont make anything. We are trading our time, our youth, our passion, our adventure-time, for some money, a shitload of stress. Thats active income. Passive income is like when artistes sing 1 song or writers write 1 book, and sit back, and keep reaping the revenue generated by that few hours/months of work. So if we had our own stall, we could operate on that concept. The stall will run and generate profits while we are in the cinema.

Isn't that great?

What else...we could skip the whole run of the mill degree-uni thing, and just go to tradeschool. Or become an apprentice. Did you know in Australia senior bricklayers get paid 1 buck per brick laid? Plumbers, mechanics, air cond repairmen, these guys make shovelloads, and they have a union. These guys rake in more dough than the typical accountant, professional, exec, white collared paper pusher doing the dirty down in the city.

Or, you could get yourself an education until you finish high school, then go into an apprenticeship or tradeschool, from 17 til 30. And all the money that would have been spent on your education post high school would go into a fund since you were 17 and earn compound interest. By the time you are 30, you'd have more than 10 years of trade experience, and 1 million in the bank, easy, to start your business with.

I wish I had done that! With my good character, smirk, I'm sure my customers would love me and keep returning.