A higher salary doesn’t always mean more actual income on an hourly basis. For example, a person making $40,000 per year might actually be making more per hour than someone earning $70,000 per year. How is that possible? Again, it’s all about life energy. If the $70,000 job costs you more in terms of your life energy—the cost in time of a long commute to the city, the cost of the kinds of clothes you need for this high-status job, and of course the extra hours you have to put into the job itself—then the person making the higher salary often comes out poorer in the end.