How Much Do I Need Per Hour?

While working some sweet overtime this weekend, I got to thinking about how much my approximate hourly wage is (I'm salaried, so I don't have an "hourly" per se) versus my lifestyle. Specifically, I began to wonder how much per hour I need to pay my current expenses, what surplus would result (if any), etc.

So yesterday I got to work on a simple spreadsheet to figure this out. I listed out my expenses and totaled them. Then I listed all of my income sources - work, Forex, interest on savings, etc. - and totaled those. I then divided these amounts by 160, the number of hours one would work in a month assuming a four week month consisting of 40 hour work weeks.

At a glance, I could see if my expenses per hour were less than or greater than my income per hour. Of course, I found that my expenses came in lower than my income.

The next step was what I was really curious about: considering my approximate passive income per hour, what hourly wage from working would I need to meet my expenses? This was simply a matter of subtracting my approximate hourly passive income from my approximate hourly required wage, the result being the lowest wage I could work for per hour and keep everything paid up.

This is important to know because it can show one their options. In this sense, what I mean by "options" is the ability of one to take on lower pay and still maintain a present standard of living. As passive income rises, the working income one requires declines. This is obvious, but without a way to visualize it, it would be difficult to pinpoint and note one's standing in relation to such a point.

It's an interesting thing to consider, not just as a person looking to gain enough passive income to stop working entirely, but perhaps for people interested in slowing down a bit but not dropping out of the workforce entirely. Really, I think this would be a good thing for just about anyone to explore since it puts a new perspective on budgeting and taking on new expenses: with a few clicks of a mouse and a bit of typing, I can see the impact of new expenses on my working versus my passive income in terms of how much longer I'll have to work to pay for them!