The Debate of Time vs. Money
Posted on April 18, 2007
How valuable is your time? What is the trade off of time vs money? Is it worth paying someone to mow your grass, clean your house, or upkeep your pool? These are questions my friends and I have been discussing lately. Due to cost, the majority of chores must be done yourself. For me paying someone to clean my house is a waste of money and makes me feel lazy. However, it may get to the point that I am working too late and need to pay someone to clean the house a couple of times a month. I would like to keep a work-life balance of being able to clean my own house, but the convenience of other items may become a reality as I grow in my career. I take a significant amount of pride in mowing my grass and taking care of my own landscaping. There may be a point landscape maintenance is worth paying for. I grew up with a pool and never enjoyed the maintenance involved with it so that may be an easy thing to pay to maintain.
Services I would not want to spend my money on:
1. Routine house cleanup
2. Landscaping
3. Weekly grass service
4. IT outsourcing (Geek squad)
5. Interior or exterior painting
6. Cooking services (chef/prepared meals/Schwans)
Services I would spend my money on:
1. Dry cleaning
2. Netflix (I hate driving to the video store)
3. Digital Video Recorder through my cable company ($6 a month, I hate commercials)
4. Pool upkeep (I will consider this if I ever have a pool)
5. Higher coverage auto insurance
6. Reasonable cell phone plan based on usage (I never want to go over my minutes/must have unlimited data plan)
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3 Responses to “The Debate of Time vs. Money”
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I have to admit, when my time ran short, I started paying a kid $10 to mow the lawn at my apartment building. I still mow my own lawn, but my wife is encouraging me to have the kid do that too.
I also pay for car washes, and we used to have a cleaning lady. If we ever get back to the salaries we were earning a few years back, I would rehire someone to clean my house. I hate to clean.
I think there will always be certain things for me that I continually pay for no matter how many frugal blogs or financial advisors recommend against it. It’s all about maintaining that balance for me.
I also used to feel that paying somebody to clean the house was a waste of money. That line of thought ended when I actually gave it a try.
We have someone come in once every two weeks and the amount of stress that this reduces is definitely measureable and worthwhile. We have two young kids and getting the house cleaned takes away one of our major stressors.
Most of all, I no longer have to deal with the tazmanian devil that my wife becomes when she is in ‘cleaning mode’.