Why do I even bother?
Do you ever wonder why you even bother working?
AT&T is a big company, one of the biggest in America, and its CEO is retiring:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/27/news/newsmakers/att_whitacre/index.htm?postversion=2007042708
Now this is what he gets for NOT working:
According to a proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Whitacre’s retirement package will include $24,000 in annual automobile benefits, $6,500 each year for “home security,” and $25,000 to cover his country-club fees, The Wall Street Journal said.
Now let me think about that. That means that he can buy my car sixteen times, per year! He can make my monthly house payment with the money he is spending on his “home security.” In less than four years he can buy my house for what he is paying for his country-club membership.
All in all, his retirement package is valued at $158.5 MILLION!
I can get a 5.5% interest rate on a savings account with over $100,000 in it, so if I put ONE million dollars in that, I can make 55,000 per year in INTEREST. I make a little more than that now, but my family could live off of that. And that is just a savings account, much better returns can be had on large sums like one million dollars through other investments.
In other words, I could live 158.5 lifetimes on what he will get for his retirement.
In other words, I am working 40 to 50 hours a week for really small potatoes. One starts to wonder why even bother? It is obvious that AT&T could set 158 (and a half) people free for life if their CEO could just be happy to live like “the rest of us.”
Just what am I working for, and just what are we paying for when we buy goods like phone service, cell phones, etc?
Honestly the whole thing just devalues money in general. If it is thrown around that freely, maybe it isn’t really worth anything after all. Maybe it isn’t even worth my time, and if money isn’t worth anyone’s time, then it isn’t worth anything at all.
