We can all agree that one of the greatest things about modern technology is just how easy it has made it to binge-watch our favorite TV shows right? Before the rise of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu anyone that wanted to watch every episode of their favorite program in a single marathon session could only do so by buying all of the DVDs and watching them back-to-back-to-back. Anyone utilizing that method also had extra work to do if they wanted to keep the story in order, since they would have to know which disk number they had been watching so that they could put in the next one correctly, like a peasant.
Thankfully, modern streaming services have done away with such concerns and made it easier than ever to plop down on the couch and watch hour after hour of your favorite shows. As a result, the marathon binge-watch has become a common part of many lives, whether they are watching a show for the first time or the hundredth.
But have you ever thought about what that time on the couch is costing you (aside from a $10.99 monthly subscription fee, that is)?
A television binge-watch requires a major time commitment to complete, and as the old saying goes, time is money. In the case of today’s world of side hustles, that phrase rings truer than ever.
While turning on and tuning out can be enjoyable, every minute spent in front of a screen watching The Office for the 14th time is a minute you could theoretically be making money. How much money you might ask? Well thankfully someone has done the math for us.
Finty, a personal finance-focused website, took the time to see how much time it would take to watch beloved TV shows such as Friends, Law & Order, Stranger Things, and more. They then found the average amount that people earn per hour in different jobs like bartending, operating rideshare, waiting tables, and many more to find out how much money people could make at those jobs in the same amount of time it would take to binge-watch the entirety of each series.
Unsurprisingly, long-running shows like Law & Order, The Simpsons, and Grey’s Anatomy take the top sports here, with the average job raking in over $3,300 for each of those shows. The longest-running of those series, Law & Order, actually saw the earning potential of workers rise over $6,200 on average across the ten jobs included in the evaluation.
If you want to see how your side hustle and favorite show stack up, you can read the entire evaluation here.