Hard Earned Money

Tuesday, October 05, 2004
I hate the term hard earned money. Is that implying that some money is not "hard earned"?

If money is not "hard earned" and is in fact "easily earned" than wouldn't that mean everybody would be able to do it and become rich?

So what qualifies money as being hard earned? Do I have to sweat to earn it or is exercising my mind enough? Is there an income restriction so when I earn too much everything after that is just "easy"?

6 comments:

Kat said...

good point. i think it's easier to make the distinction between gifted money and earned money. some kids have credit cards their parents pay the bills on. that's gifted money. some kids work at hot dog on a stick to get money. that's earned.

T said...

Yes, there is clearly a distinction between gifted and earned money. However I would still say the money kids get from their parents is hard-earned. Maybe they didn't earn it but their parents did. And isn't it the right of every parent to pass on to their kids the fruits of their labor? Isn't it the dream of parents to provide a better life for their kids than they had?

Ryan said...

I think "hard-earned" refers to the current owner of the money. It's quite a stretch to say that a child is spending his or her hard-earned money when someone else earned it. Where would you stop? If I received an inheritence from a rich aunt can I talk about my hard-earned money? In fact, maybe she didn't earn but inherited it as well. If I get rich quick by winning the lottery is it hard-earned money because someone before me worked hard to gather it? If I find money on the ground is it hard-earned because maybe the previous owner worked for it? If you define hard-earned as "at some point in the past a previous owner put effort into it" then the term becomes meaningless.

T said...

They did not "earn" it in the true sense so I agree with you that it isn't "hard-earned". I am not trying to imply someone who inherits money or wins the lottery in any way earned that money.

Of course this whole argument between "earning" and "getting" is off topic. The actual question is whether money which is "earned", whatever your definition might be, is really ever easily earned.

Susan said...

Hard earned money is money someone has to work hard to get :). I think there is a difference between money earned by someone doing something they really do *just* to earn money. They do what they can to bring in the $. Or they work 80 hours a week and have no time to themselves. Easy earned money is when you work for the state and have 24 paid vacation days, 24 paid sick days, 11 paid holidays and a flex schedule that allows you pretty much to come and go as you please. Oh yeah and you blog from work.

juks said...

it is just a rthorical term people who don't like paying taxes use. There's nothing wrong with the word itself, but some term are culturally mostly used by certain kind of people and make a red bell go off in my head. Just like the word filth is usually associated with censors.