It’s another Monday. How was your weekend? What did you do? Travel? Spend time with the family? Chores around the house?
How about what did you want to do? As you look back on the weekend what did you want to do that you didn’t have time for? If you didn’t have the time what was keeping from doing what you wanted?
How much time did you spend this weekend doing something that you thought needed to get done rather than doing what you wanted to do? Could you have found someone else to do it for you?
People spend a couple of hours mowing the lawn, a couple hours going grocery shopping, a couple hours cleaning the house, a couple hours working on their car, etc. Did you know that peapod charges less than $10 to deliver your groceries? That’s it. You go online and put in your order and they deliver them. The first time through might take a while to set up your whole order then after that it’s already stored. You just re-order what’s running low and add a couple of different things. Don’t we all just get the same basic things every week anyways? Is two hours of your time worth more than $10? What if you worked for those two hours would you make more than $10? From a money standpoint wouldn’t it be better to work two extra hours, spend $10 and make $20, $50, $200? Or what would two extra hours with your family be worth?
Have you looked at what it would cost for someone to mow your lawn? Clean your house? Work on your car? Do whatever else is taking up your free time? Then compare that with a couple of extra hours of doing what you really want to be doing; spending time with the family, traveling, golfing, going to the beach, etc. What would your ideal weekend look like? If it costs you an extra $50 to spend a few hours doing what you really want to be doing wouldn’t that be worth it? How about from a happiness stand point? Do you think that happiness might just carry over into other aspects of your life? Maybe you could put a smile on someone’s face. Maybe even your own.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
In the end the answer to this question is mostly personal perception of the time/value equation.
My take is that you are virtually always better off doing it yourself. Your time is only worth what you can make in a year divided by all the hours in the year. Your money however is worth a lot of time.
Assume your wage it $10/hr. When you pay someone $10 it’s not only one hours worth of your labor. Out of the 10 you made in income you pay taxes, rent, heat, light, gas etc…. You are only left with disposable income. It is from this money you pay a vendor. For every $10 you pay you must first make hundreds, even thousands.
At http://www.eliminatethemuda.com I provide the proof and a calculator so you can prove to yourself that it is always easier to save a dollar than to make a dollar.