In my last post, I covered the 4 ways to get free moving boxes. I was so pleased with myself, having already asked coworkers (still a great idea!) and having saved boxes throughout the year in anticipation of our move.
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I learned my lesson. Sometimes your time is more valuable than money and, I have to admit, I did end up buying some boxes from Home Depot.
It turns out, there are times when your time is worth more than money. It could be safety reasons, sanity reasons, or making more money reasons. It could be because some things cost you more money doing it yourself, so it doesn’t make financial sense to do it yourself. Here are the times when it makes more sense to value your time over your money.
Your Time is Worth More Than Money Depending on What You Value
Anyone can tell you to take your current hourly salary and value your time accordingly. For example, if you make $30 an hour, then if you can’t find someone to do some task for you for less than $30, you should do it yourself.
However, it’s not that easy. While it may be cheaper to do some things yourself, should you? First of all, seriously, should you? Not everyone should be an electrician in their own home, even if an electrician costs $50 an hour. The electrician is worth it on safety grounds alone.
Also, do you have other priorities? Do you have a family, a dog, friends you occasionally like to hang out with? If doing everything means cutting out family, your place of worship (however you define it), and your hobbies, it’s not really worth sacrificing your time to save a little bit of money.
Other people enjoy cleaning their homes, making their own coffee, running their own errands, maintaining their home and more. If that’s you, go for it! If that’s not you, and it’s not entirely cost-prohibitive, it might make more sense that your time is worth more than your money.
Your Time is Worth More Than Money When You Can Make More Money
After you’ve prioritized your tasks and either eliminated or outsourced what gets in the way of family and/or sanity, consider your side hustle. Can you make more per hour on your own business than you would if you were working other tasks?
If you’ve got a lucrative side hustle or the ability to build it up by spending time on it, it might be more worthwhile to spend your time on that versus other tasks that won’t make you any money. Without sacrificing too much personal time (like time with family or personal hygiene… don’t give up brushing your teeth to spend a few extra minutes on your business!), carefully spend your time dedicated to building your business and turning it into passive income.
Your Time is Worth More Than Money When You’re Wasting Time Driving Around
To go back to the moving boxes, last weekend my husband and I were enthusiastically stalking the Craigslist ‘free’ section for moving boxes. Every 5 minutes, we would refresh my screen to see if any free moving boxes popped up. We had 2 weeks to get everything packed and shoved away in storage before the realtor came to take pictures to put the house up for sale.
The one thing you have to know about Phoenix? It’s huge. It’s 500 square miles, and it can easily take you an hour or longer to drive from the north of Phoenix to the south of Phoenix. So finding free moving boxes within a 20 minute drive was important: driving an hour for boxes wouldn’t make sense.
40 miles and 0 boxes later, we learned our lesson. You can drive 15 minutes to one place only to find the moving boxes already scooped up (as we did), then get a hit on boxes another 15 minutes away, only to find them gone. Then you realize someone was giving away boxes 5 minutes away from your house, only you’re 25 minutes away now, and not 5.
Nearly an hour of driving for nothing. My car gets pretty good gas mileage, but wasting gas even at $2 a gallon is not what I want to do.
Think of it this way: even if it’s an expensive item being offered at a discount, if it’s already gone when you get there (many people won’t hold items for you), you’ve wasted your money and time and you didn’t even get what you came for. That’s not worth it!
When Someone Else Can Get It Done Cheaper
One of the best examples of when your time is worth more than your money is taxes. Unless you love doing your taxes and are good at it, it might be cheaper to have an accountant do it for you.
For example, my taxes have finally become unwieldy enough that I just didn’t want to take the time to do them. Last year I owed money, too, and didn’t feel like watching my money dwindle away on Turbo Tax like I did the previous year.
Hiring an excellent and well-recommended accountant cost me $125 and saved me time, headaches… and I actually got a refund, which more than paid for the accountant fees. I was able to spend time packing up the house and working with our mortgage lender instead of agonizing over every Turbo Tax click, and that’s worth it to me.
Is there something you do right now that you don’t like and could outsource? It doesn’t have to be taxes. Some people loathe cleaning the house, and hire an $150 a month housekeeping service. Some people don’t like running errands and hire TaskRabbit to do it for them.
I’m not saying spend your money just to spend it, but seriously consider the time it takes to do something and if you could be more productive (and possibly make more money) elsewhere.
When have you decided that your time was worth more than your money, and what things do you do yourself to save money?
George @ Properly says
Hiring movers when moving into a new apartment is well worth the money to me. For my first ever apartment, I did the move myself – rented a truck, packed and unpacked boxes, carried furniture, and all of that fun stuff. Sure I saved some money but the effort and stress was definitely not worth it. I’ve moved twice since that experience and I hired movers both times.
Kevin Finn says
Hello Melissa, thanks for this nice blog post. I really enjoyed reading and knowing how much is worth your time. Normally I do try many different things to save money. Currently I’m employing lots of people to my freelance business to deliver faster work. I’m hiring them virtually, instead getting a large office room and paying various utility bills.