I've often seen it suggested to measure your hourly rate (or more) against whether one should spend time on doing something yourself vs paying a service. I find that this increasingly has indicated that I should spend more to be frugal. I have spent time in every percentile of US income and this has never actually changed my mind from what I instinctively felt like doing (or not).
This affects me both ways. There's stuff where I'm sure the numbers say I should hire a service, but really? I'm just going to do it. And for other stuff, even if the numbers say I'm being frugal when I'm paying my handyman or whatever, I feel like I'm kidding myself if it call it that.
To me it's no problem to ignore the"frugal tip" and just do what feels right and convenient, but it does have me wondering if anyone has the discipline/desire to consistently lean on the calculation. I think a very small amount of people could use a reminder that their time is worth *something*, but I struggle to see any usefulness beyond that.
Does anyone actually put a number to "the value of their time" and use it?
byu/TRO_KIK inFrugal
Posted by TRO_KIK
13 Comments
I do when shopping. I know (roughly) how much I make per hour (I’m salary) and will do math in my head if I’m considering buying something. I ask myself if that item is worth X hours of my time.
Yes, but just because my time is worth $50 for 40hrs a week, doesn’t mean it’s worth $50/hr at all times. Thursday at 9pm I wont refuse to take the trash out because it’s not a $50/he activity.
I think it’s more of a helpful thing to keep in mind rather than actually live by. If I spend 3 hours making dinner, that’d be $90 of my time that I could spend on a pretty great dinner out. However, I’m not being paid for those 3 hours and I also enjoy cooking.
I think this way of thinking is probably best suited to the very privileged. Just ’cause I worked a few hours of overtime doesn’t mean I’m immediately going to spend that extra income on some good or service that will offset my lost time.
I do that for stuff like oil changes
I do it quite often. It’s not hard as I set my value to an easy amount to multiple. Thing is it’s not a cold hard calculation because motivation, energy levels and how much extra stress it will add to my life also come into play. It’s not so much an exact figure as a is it worth it to me calculation not something I’m actually putting on a balance sheet. Honestly one of the reasons I’m frugal is so I can make the “it’s not worth it to me to do that thing” choices either in cost or stress or quality of life and afford to pay someone else to do it. And also what I’m willing to pay for varies depending on a lot more factors than money. When I’ve been recovering from surgery then paying someone $10 + tip to deliver my shopping for me has been very worth it. When I had depression paying a house cleaner to take that stress off of me was a life saver. But if you asked me now if I’d do either of those things I’d do them myself.
I don’t look at it that way, some DIY things I want to learn just for the sake of learning it, but some things are totally worth paying a service to do, lawn care for example, I get my time back along with not having to maintain/buy equipment and fuel.
I don’t charge myself for my time ever; I enjoy doing projects and learning new skills. But some years ago I did calculate an hourly rate that I quote for my time when asked to give my professional services to some organization or person– I’ll do it for free for non-profits usually, but when someone in a commercial capacity wants some of my time it gets expensive fast.
I participate in market research surveys online. You get reimbursed for your time and input at various rates, and they provide an estimate for how long they expect the survey to take to complete. They typically low-ball these estimates, and don’t factor in the time it takes to apply to participate – which can sometimes take as long as 10-20min. As a result, I never sign up for any studies that compensate less than a dollar/min.
I did that with my time when I was working and self employed. Now that I’m retired I tend to do it somewhat with my time but more with gas and mileage. Like I pay an annual fee for free grocery / household goods delivery. Not shopping in person at all saves my time I could be working higher value house project and makes it easier to price shop. But it also meant we could go to one car, and that one car has lower gas and repair bills now.
I don’t see how it’s relevant. It’s not like i can just decide to make money whenever i want. I have a job, and i can only work the hours I’m scheduled to work. It’s not like I’m doing something, and i could instead be working and making money.
The value of my free time is $0.
well unless you’d be working otherwise (that means you work for yourself I guess), I don’t understand that logic. you can’t bill yourself for stuff you do for yourself. do you bill yourself for showering? sleeping? watching tv?
on an other hand it’s fine to think some things are not worth your trouble or doing.
look i can sew by hand , as in I know how to….. but I don’t have the patience or the will! to me it is extremely boring! unless it’s something small, I am not going to do it! I am fine paying someone to do it. doing it with a sewing machine on an other hand is not an issue.
some hard work that I am not interested in I am glad to pay for it.
it’s not all about the money, I like to do stuff on my own; you get some special satisfaction from it.
This was one of the important parts about my kids getting PT jobs as soon as they legally could. They learned about the value of their labor and time and how to manage the money they made working etc etc.
I dislike it when people say to use your salary to determine when to hire it out/spend more money because:
1. Most people have a fixed salary, which means that they can’t just work more that week to make up for the cost of spending more money.
2. If you do have the ability to work more to make more money, why do you want to spend even more time at that one thing? I agree with the statement “specialization is for insects”. Humans naturally spent their days doing a myriad of different tasks rather than one thing for 8 hours a day.
3. There is something to be said for gaining skills and ultimately greater self sufficiency by learning do things yourself. Even if a service is affordable now, it may become less affordable in the future as more people forget how to do it (e.g., car repair)
Of course there are many things not worth the time like most coupons. But I strongly believe the sentiment to use your salary to determine when to hire it out/spend more money is driven by marketing trying to make you spend more money.