Buy Back Your Time
Convert money into hours whenever your hourly value beats the price
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 79%
Hormozi argues spending money well is itself a skill, and the highest-ROI purchase is time. Add up what the average person loses each week to driving, gas, cooking and cleaning food, cleaning the dwelling, and prepping clothes — roughly 20 to 25 hours a week, about 90 hours a month. The cumulative cost to outsource all of it runs around fifteen hundred dollars a month via a housekeeper, cook, and driver. The decision rule: if you can make more than about fifty dollars an hour with freed time, or would simply pay fifty dollars to have it, the trade is worth it. As an investor he treats buying an entrepreneur a hundred hours a month for fifty grand as the highest-ROI money he can spend.
Origin
Alex Hormozi's framing of money-for-time conversion, offered on Modern Wisdom when Chris Williamson asked what he'd learned about spending effectively.
Core principles
- 01Spending money effectively is a skill most people never acquire
- 02Time is the easiest thing money can buy back
- 03The trade is worth it whenever your hourly value beats the cost
- 04The guilt of paying for what you could do free is the real blocker
- 05Reclaimed hours pay memory dividends, not just efficiency
How to run it
- 1
Tally the lost hours
Add up the weekly time spent on driving, gas, food prep, cooking, cleaning of food, cleaning your dwelling, and cleaning and prepping clothes. For the average person it's about 20–25 hours a week, roughly 90 a month.
Pro tip Count the whole chain around a chore, not just the chore itself — driving and prep hide most of the hours.
- 2
Price the buy-back
Cost out a housekeeper who can also cook, plus a daily rideshare or driver, to cover those tasks. Bundled, it runs around fifteen hundred dollars a month at the low end.
Pro tip One capable housekeeper-cook can fold two roles into one and lower the price.
- 3
Compare to your hourly value
If you can generate more than about fifty dollars an hour with the reclaimed time, or would simply pay that much to have the hours free, the trade clears.
Pro tip The higher your income, the more each reclaimed hour is worth — the trade only gets better.
- 4
Delegate lowest-value first, past the guilt
Start by offloading the lowest-value hours. The real obstacle is the guilt of paying for something you could do for free — the sense of opulence, wastefulness, and entitlement.
Pro tip Being around people who already do this normalizes it and dissolves the guilt faster.
Watch out The middle-income earner, not the millionaire, most needs this — and most resists it on guilt.
In the wild
When Hormozi looks into a company, one of the first things he checks is whether the entrepreneur has a housekeeper, a driver, and the like. Buying that founder back a hundred hours a month for around fifty grand a year is, in his framing, the highest-ROI money he can deploy as an investor, because those hours go back into the highest-leverage work only the founder can do.
→ Time bought back is reinvested into the business's highest-value activity, compounding the return.
Most people who start earning more stop at a nicer house, nicer car, nicer clothes, and occasional travel — then plateau. They never learn the further moves: paying down time and buying experiences that create lasting memory dividends. The skill of spending, Hormozi notes, has levels most never climb.
→ Recognizing the plateau opens up spending that materially improves daily experience.
Common mistakes
Treating spending as unskilled
People assume there are no levels to spending money, so they stop at house-car-food-travel and never learn to convert money into time or memories.
Letting guilt block the trade
The 'I can do this for free, so I shouldn't pay someone' guilt keeps people doing low-value chores worth a fraction of their hourly value. The guilt, not the math, is the real barrier.
Is it for you?
Best for
People earning well past their needs who still do their own chores out of habit or guilt.
Not ideal for
Anyone whose hourly value or income can't yet cover the buy-back without strain.
From the transcript
“it costs roughly fifteen hundred dollars a month to get about ninety hours a month back”
“the highest ROI money I can spend as an investor is getting a hundred hours a month back for the entrepreneur for 50 grand.”
From the episode
41 Harsh Truths Nobody Wants To Admit - Alex Hormozi - #952
Alex Hormozi