Why it was said

Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez introduce this definition in the early steps of Your Money or Your Life, before the calculation of the real hourly wage that strips commuting, clothes and recovery time out of a salary.

What it actually means

The definition converts every price into hours of a finite life, and once the conversion is made it cannot be unmade. The jacket costs a Tuesday; the car costs three months. The sentence is not against spending; it is for spending consciously, with the true price visible, and the book's later steps, tracking every expense and asking whether it returned fulfilment proportional to the life energy spent, follow directly from it.

How to use it

1. 1Work out your real hourly wage after commuting, work clothes and recovery, and price your next purchase in hours.
2. 2For a month, mark each expense with whether the fulfilment matched the hours it cost.