Black Friday in Work Hours: Price the Deal in Hours Before You Buy

• Step 1: your real hourly rate
• Step 2: price the item in hours
• Step 3: set an hours cap per item
• Make it automatic
• Tools that help

A $240 TV marked down to $180 feels like you earned $60. A better question is how many hours of your work the $180 costs. Turning a price into hours is one of the quickest ways to cool down a sale-day decision.

§Step 1: your real hourly rate

Start with take-home pay, not the gross number on your offer letter.

• Take your monthly take-home pay.
• Divide by the hours you actually work in a month, including regular overtime.
• If you commute, add the commute time to the hours and subtract commute costs from the pay.

Example: $3,200 take-home for 170 hours of work plus 20 hours of commuting, minus $160 of commuting costs, gives about $16 per hour.

§Step 2: price the item in hours

Divide the sale price by that rate.

• $180 TV at $16 per hour = about 11 hours of work.
• $60 “saving” = about 4 hours.
• $45 gadget you saw at checkout = almost 3 hours.

The question becomes: is this TV worth a day and a half of work to me? Sometimes the answer is yes, and that is fine. The point is to answer it on purpose.

§Step 3: set an hours cap per item

Next to each item on your Black Friday list, write the most you will pay as hours, not dollars. “Headphones: 5 hours max” is easier to stick to than “about $80”, because it ties the decision to effort you remember.

§Make it automatic

You can do the division in your head, or let a browser extension do it for you on shopping pages, so every price you see also shows the hours behind it. Either way, decide your hourly rate once, before the sale starts, and use the same number all weekend.

§Tools that help

• Black Friday Deal Tracker spreadsheet ($2.99, Google Sheets + Excel): set a total, track target vs sale prices, and see spent, saved and left, per person and in total: https://smartbudgetsheet.gumroad.com/l/ykmstz?utm_source=nostr&utm_campaign=bf_article
• Hourly to salary calculator: https://smartbudgetsheets.surge.sh/calculators/hourly-to-salary-calculator/?utm_source=nostr
• Black Friday budget calculator: https://smartbudgetsheets.surge.sh/calculators/black-friday-budget-calculator/?utm_source=nostr
• Price in Work Hours, a free Chrome extension that shows prices as hours of your work: https://smartbudgetsheets.surge.sh/extensions/price-in-work-hours/?utm_source=nostr
• 42 free budget templates, pay what you want ($0 is fine): https://smartbudgetsheet.gumroad.com/l/ngpkrb?utm_source=nostr

General information, not financial advice.