Welcome to The Stoic Ledger, a daily money meditation from one of the Stoic sages.

32/365: Epictetus on self worth

We trade time for dollars. In a sense, we sell ourselves to a system that awards us wages for hours and output.

Time in, economic resources out.

The rate we claim for our time is a function of worth. The catch is that this worth is often out of alignment with how we value ourselves.

We know we are worth more.

Further, it’s not us that the externals — the corporates, the public enterprises, the nonprofits — misvalue; it’s the position and requisite skill to perform with proficiency.

Knowing this, we see that it’s in our control to understand our own worth, it is our duty, to reconcile the appropriate wage we sell our time, therefore ourselves.

Epictetus was a slave. He knew what it was like to be confined to a master, to lack external freedom. He also knew that we become slaves to our material possessions, and that those with many wants must continuously sell themselves for a wage.

In this light, less is more. More freedom from less time lost with this old barter.

What’s your time worth and what do you currently sell it for?