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Dear For Love & Money,
My wife and I make good money and are very comfortable financially, but we both have responsibilities that we're sick of. I'd like to hire out more of our home repairs, and I know my wife would love to get a weekly house cleaner.
While I know we can afford these things, we've also been getting by without them our entire lives. I feel like if I can lay new floors or fix the washing machine, it's lazy and wasteful to pay someone else to do it.
My wife always points out that "Time is money," and I know she has a point. But how do we know when it's financially prudent to start buying our time back?
Sincerely,
DIY or Die, I guess
Dear DIY,
I get it. I think anyone who didn't grow up in a family with staff understands the feeling you describe in your letter. Whether it's looking on the bright side, accepting our social immobility, or even jealousy, at some point as a society, we turned "I don't hire outside help for things I'm perfectly capable of doing myself" into a virtue.
There's a work ethic to saving money — a rugged independence — that we admire for the same reason we admire marathon runners and mountain climbers. There's no real purpose to their endeavors beyond the triumph over their own limitations.
But we've all struggled to do hard things, and that sense of achievement we feel when we're done speaks for itself. Anything difficult to accomplish with that level of emotional payoff must be a virtue, including managing our budget.
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The flip side is that we begin to see the opposite behavior as un-virtuous. If fixing your car, doing your own laundry, and mowing your own grass are shining examples of a strong work ethic, then not doing those things must mean you are "lazy and wasteful." But would you consider me a sedentary slob because I've never run a marathon? I'd hope not, because I do plenty of other important things every day, and running a marathon is no more a virtue than laying your own floors.
The thing is, we aren't really admiring someone's ability to do their own home repairs or run a marathon; we all do the former, and ultimately, the latter is just running. No, we don't admire the hard thing for its own sake; we respect one another's ability to do it, to challenge ourselves, to push through when we feel like giving up.
While we may not applaud every time our neighbors snake their own drain, we sure celebrate our own little accomplishments. So it makes sense that you are wary of a lifestyle without that sense of achievement, that feeling that you qualify as a good person simply through the monotonous execution of everyday responsibilities.
Let's look at the other side of those chores, though. They aren't fun. Laying floors and scrubbing baseboards is a miserable way to spend an afternoon, but we do these tasks because we have to. But you don't have to because you can afford to pay other people to do them.
I assume you go out to dinner sometimes, you buy your vegetables in a grocery store, and you've paid for parking a few times in your life. Why? You could make your own fancy dinners from vegetables you grew yourself. You could have found free parking and walked three miles to your destination.
But don't worry; you don't have to defend your choice to treat yourself to a dinner out, buy your carrots at the grocery store, and not arrive at your brother's wedding reception dripping with sweat. Because the answer to that "why?" is obvious.
Life is a series of trade-offs. We trade our time for money, and we trade our money for time. There is no shame in exchanging money for a Saturday you would have otherwise spent on your knees hammering floorboards together. Remember, there is nothing innately virtuous about putting your own floor in, so if you have the money not to, and that's how you want to spend it, I say go for it!
Another thing to consider when we discuss trading time for money is who is getting that money. We can't all afford to provide jobs and incomes for other people, but if you can, doing so is in itself a positive contribution to the world.
Every time you cry and curse your way through a DIY job you prepped for by watching a couple of YouTube tutorials, remember there is someone out there who supports their family by doing that same task and has the skill set to prove it. That same person would be thrilled to have the job you hate so much. So, if you have the money, what are you trying to prove by not letting them do it?
You asked, "When is it time to start buying our time back?" But there is no income bracket where someone with a DIY or die mindset will wake up one day and say, "I'm rich. I can start spending frivolously now. First things first, someone else can clean my toilet!" Instead, ask yourself these three questions: Do I enjoy doing this myself? Does my financial plan support hiring someone else to do it? And, will eliminating this task make me happier than other things I could spend that money on?
From there, the choice is yours.
Rooting for you,
For Love & Money
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