What’s your time worth? Be honest!
November 22nd, 2006 | by mbhunter |If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
A bit of an exchange on a couple of great financial blogs. Make Love, Not Debt questions whether it’s worth it to hire out a laundry service (at $648 per year) to save 54 hours of laundry-doing during that year, rather than spend $360 less but spend the 54 hours.
Blueprint for Financial Prosperity pipes up to say that no, it’s not worth the money because it’s likely that the saved time will not be spent working to earn above and beyond what the service costs.
The real answer: It depends. While in a lot of cases paying someone else to do something (laundry, grocery shopping, mowing your lawn, whatever) is not wise financially, in some cases it is not only a better use of your time to hire out, but it can be cheaper overall, without even considering the time spent! We found this out after hiring out a carper cleaner. We could have spent more money, more time, and not have the carpets look as good as they do now.
The other “it depends” angle to all of this is how you spend your time while you’re paying someone else is doing your chores. Now, of course if you’re watching TV while your laundry is being done, that doesn’t have the same kind of payback as working at your job. Though I do agree with Jim that it’s disingenuous to make the assumption that your time is worth $X per hour because you could be working during that time (when you actually won’t, or maybe can’t or shouldn’t), it’s also limiting to cap it off at that amount. If I were to spend an extra hour per week on business or personal development (blog posting, classes, training, putting up satellite sites, website promotion) within a year or so it could generate a lot more than my day job — if I were smart about it.
It’s refreshing to daydream for a while (”My time is worth $500 per hour!”) and then actually make a plan to get there. But the plan requires time, and a well laid-out plan still requires time, just not as much. So if in those 54 hours MLND writes an extra 100 blog posts, 10 of which are really good, and a couple which get dugg to the front page and get mentioned in Newsweek, then the financial outlay for the laundry service may have been worth it.
Anyway, nice discussion guys. Any other takes?
4 Responses to “What’s your time worth? Be honest!”
By Golbguru on Nov 22, 2006 | Reply
I tend to agree with Jim there. It doesnt make sense to put numbers on every minute of your day. If I don’t brush my teeth in the morning everyday I will save 5 minutes a day. For 365 days thats about 30 hours !! that’s about $600 for me :). That doesn’t mean I will save $600 by saving 5 minutes everyday by not brushing my teeth.
By Rich Slick on Nov 22, 2006 | Reply
The brushing your teeth analogy is flawed. Think of it this way…if you could achieve the same “teeth brushing” results (or perhaps even better results) by using those crest white strips vs. brushing every day how much would you be willing to pay for those white strips?
Assume the strips have same cavity fighting properties as toothpaste and toothbrush although they really don’t.
If the White Strips costs $20 and you simply stuck them on every morning (5 seconds) then took them off would it be worth it vs. having to brush every day?
I’ll argue that you can put a value on just about everything and most people do it all the time they’re simply unaware of it.
Why do you drive a car vs. taking the bus? Because you value your time and don’t want to wait around for the bus!
Why do you fly to a destination rather than taking a bus, boat, or horse somewhere? Because you value your time?
Why do you rent DVDs from Netflix? Because you save money & time?
Just because you don’t take advantage of the convenience doesn’t mean it never played a factor.
The key factor here is the opportunity cost and if you work for any type of business you deal with it every single day. I’ll make an argument that the people that typically climb to the top of management positions are the ones that are the best at deciphering the time value of money question.
By Golbguru on Nov 28, 2006 | Reply
@ the comment by Rich Slick,
I do understand the time value of money factor. But that is relevant only if you justify the extra time costs by an equivalent value.
Compare overnight shipping and ground shipping. Of course you will save about 6 days in getting some stuff the next days, but are you really going to make use of the stuff in those 6 days that will make the overnight shipping costs worth it?
And certainly, there are days when taking a bus/boat makes much more economic sense than flying.
The point is you can’t simply take a few hours and multiply them with a factor and say “Oh I saved money”..there needs to some judicious thinking before crunching these numbers. I am just talking of the “time” here…”efforts” are not considered.
By D Scott on Jan 22, 2007 | Reply
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OPRAH WINFREY, 20/20 and an article published in the Wall Street Journal on 6/16/2001.
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REQUIREMENTS:
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Remember, play FAIRLY and HONESTLY and this will really work. WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND!!!
GOD BLESS YOU!
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YOUR FINANCIAL LIFE DEPENDS SIMPLY ON YOUR ACTS…
Just DO IT!!!!
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