Last week, a technology recycling event was held outside the Mall of America. There was so much demand for everyone’s cast-offs that the organizers closed it early.

I often feel like I’m buried in the product of technology– pages of emails that I should read and at least acknowledge with a thank you. Invitations to Facebook and Linked In– two social networks that I have no time to maintain (I can barely find time to call my sister).

If much of the working world feels the way I do, no wonder author Timothy Ferriss is scoring the top spot on bestselling lists for his book “The Four-Hour Workweek.”

The New York Times wrote a good story about Ferriss this weekend. He runs a sports nutrition supplement company yet manages to check email just once per day and do little work. Much of his life is outsourced and he spends most of his time espousing his philosophy.

Hopefully many of you like your jobs. But my guess is most of you wouldn’t mind having a bit more time to do something else– even if that something is doing nothing at all.

But most of us need to earn money. And I can’t imagine most bosses responding fondly to the idea of working 30 hours a week, let alone four.

Ferriss insists that money should not hold us back. Instead of thinking about our annual incomes, we should be calculating our Target Daily Income and has a calculator to show us how we can live our dreams. I’m doubtful about his assertion that I could afford a fancy car if I wanted one. But could I do my work in less time? Probably.

Do you think you could be just as productive in less time on the clock? Do you have strategies for managing email more effectively? What about your finances?

I’ve blogged about my eternal struggle to balance time and money in the past:

Anyone have a wife to spare?

When you finally have less time than money.

The eternal balance between time and money.

Today I stumbled upon a detailed time value of money calculator that allows you to calculate the value of one hour of your time after loading in variables such as income, taxes, work expenses, child care, etc.

According to the calculator, I net a little more than $15 per hour after expenses such as child care, commuting costs, work clothes (even if I didn’t work I doubt I’d resist the lure of the mall).

It also asks you questions about how much time you spend sleeping, taking care of kids, doing household chores and exercising. I’m not 100% sure that my answers are accurate since I think often times I’m taking care of kids while doing chores and considering it exercise.

Based on the figures I entered: 7 hours per night sleep, 12 hours weekly of household chores, 26 hours of child care, and 8 hours of exercise and grooming, I have about 34 hours in leisure time, each “purchased” by 1.19 hours of work time, or $18.50, the calculator explains. That’s after work hours of course. And I haven’t figured out if it adds up to 24 hour days.

Its conclusion? If I have $18.50 in my pocket and can find someone to perform a task I’d rather not do for less than that, it would be worth it from a time value of money perspective to hire that person.

But as we all know, there’s only so much money and so much time to earn it. So as lovely as that sounds, most of my

It’s a joke that my husband and I have had for a couple of years now, especially when trying to juggle a busy work week, a sick kid, or a house repair.

Apparently I’m not the only gal in the world yearning for an extra pair of hands. Here’s a New York Times story on the subject.

So this weekend, I sat down to pay a bill and realized I completely forgot about paying one last month. Luckily it wasn’t a credit card and I didn’t incur any fees.

When I meekly mentioned to Matt that I slipped up and it’s “getting harder to remember to juggle all of the bills,” he gave me a confused look and said something like “aren’t the bills set up on auto pilot?”

It’s a good question. We pay most bills online, why in the world don’t I set up automatic bill pay?

Because despite the fact that I have bounced a grand total of two checks in my 15 year check writing career, I’ve always been afraid that bill pay would lead me down a slippery slope of bounced checks and closed accounts.

But with our average checking account balance above the $1,000 level, I think it’s finally time for me to truly enter the 21st century and automate my bills.

Now the question is, how? Do I pay through Quicken or some other one-stop shop? Do I set it up at each bill’s web site? Should I start paying bills with a credit card to maximize points (that seems like an obvious yes!)?

Used to be I came back to work after a weekend feeling refreshed. These days, I feel as if I need another weekend.

The reason: I have a scarcity of time to accomplish everything I need to do.

This problem, which I’ve been mulling over ever since I had my second child, can be solved two ways.

I can make changes to how I spend my time. Or I can make changes to how I spend my money that alleviates the lack of time.

When I was first starting out in my career, the scarce resource was most definitely money. So I worked retail a few evenings a week to afford extras like clothes and eating out while still saving for retirement.

Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to add a few