Episodes / Can Ray Afford It? #4
I Can Afford a $10,050 Rolex. Buying One Is the Hard Part
The Rolex everybody pictures. At $24 an hour, the steel diver costs me 419 hours, which means, for once, I can actually afford the thing. Then I tried to buy one: the price, the tax, insurance, service, the cost per hour, and the one bill you can't pay in hours.
Chapters
- The watch (US list price)
- $10,050
- Sales tax (US average)
- ~$760
- Insurance, 10 years
- ~$1,500
- One complete service
- $770
- Ten years of owning it
- ~$13,000
- = Ray's work hours
- ~545
- Rent-years
- 0.87
- The wait
- TBA
- Verdict
- Yes. Take a number.
Total: The money was the easy part. The wait is the one bill I can't pay in hours.
Sources
Numbers in the episode are estimates built from these. If you spot a mistake, tell Ray: hello@brokeray.com.
- Price, water resistance and precision: rolex.com, Submariner (no date), m124060-0001 (Nov 2026)
- Service prices: rolex.com, Pricing for a complete service (2026)
- January 2026 price increase: Gear Patrol via Yahoo Finance (Dec 22, 2025), citing WatchPro
- Sales tax: Tax Foundation, State and Local Sales Tax Rates, 2026 (July 2026)
- Insurance: BriteCo, How Much Is Watch Insurance?; GEICO, jewelry insurance coverage
- Rolex on scarcity: statement to the press (Sep 2021), via Hypebeast and JCK
- Production estimate: Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult, via Fortune (Feb 2024)
- Pre-owned prices, wait times and purchase history: Grailr, Rolex Submariner Price Guide (Oct 2026); National Jeweler (Feb 2021); Gear Patrol, How to Buy a Rolex (2019)
- Service interval: aBlogtoWatch (2015)
- Plastic digital watch: Gear Patrol (watch review); IEEE Spectrum, The Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame
How we counted: a rent-year is $15,000 (my rent, $1,250 a month). Work hours are at $24 an hour, before taxes. Watch: the US list price of the steel no-date diver on rolex.com ($10,050, Nov 2026). Sales tax: the US population-weighted average, 7.53% (about $757). Insurance: 1.5% of the value a year (insurers quote 1–2%). Service: Rolex's posted US price for a complete service on modern models ($770), about every 10 years. Forty years: $10,050 + tax + 4 services + 40 years of insurance, about $19,900 over 350,640 hours, about 6¢ an hour, at today's prices. The parked jet ($315 an hour) is from our private jet episode. Skipping the line: pre-owned listings around $12,300 minus $10,050 = $2,250. Ten years of owning it: watch + tax + 10 years of insurance + one service, about $13,077, less than one rent-year. Wait times and purchase-history requirements are buyer and dealer reports, not an official Rolex policy. The plastic watch comparison is between two spec sheets (about ±1 second a day vs −2/+2 seconds a day), not a lab test.
Rolex is a trademark of its owner; the watch on screen is a generic drawing. Not affiliated with any company mentioned.
Not financial advice. Narration: synthetic voice (ElevenLabs). Script and animation made by hand.