(03) 9020 2905Today I’m asking you to put a dollar value on one aspect of your life.
No, I’m not talking about life insurance, or the size of your mortgage, or how the hell you’re going to pay for 2.3 kids to go to THAT school. Not this week.
The truth is, most things are easy to value. It’s what you pay for them.
Buying lunch at work is $6-10 and a slab of beer $45. Our babysitters cost $20 an hour – leaving little change from $200 for the fortnightly “date-night” dinner.
With fuel prices high and rising, filling the car is about $70. The alternative is to walk up to 600km. Petrol is awesome value.
Watching Charlie Sheen’s career ebb and flow in a hazy mix of booze, drugs and hookers on the nightly news … well, that’s just priceless. He is the Hollywood dream/cliche. Go Charlie, go!
We know the value of a new flat-screen TV is less than what Harvey Norman advertises it for. Gerry Harvey, thanks again for the tip about how much cheaper things are on the internet.
Okay, here’s what I want you to value today. Ready?
Your time.
Any idea what your time is worth? Can you put a dollar value on it? Have you ever really thought about it? Do you care?
There are 168 hours in every week. But that’s not how many hours you get. If you thought that, go to the back of the class.
Subtract 56 hours for sleeping, 40 for working and another 3.5 hours in the bathroom getting ready, seven hours for actual eating and seven hours preparing those meals. Although obesity rates suggest we’re growing more comfortable with letting Ronald and the Colonel do the cooking.
The average weekly commute is about five hours and we spend about half an hour a day on housework. Exercise? Let’s be generous and say four hours.
We’re down to 42 hours.
And we haven’t yet mentioned taxiing the kids around, paying bills, food shopping, gardening, etc.
Down to 30 hours a week. If you’ve got young kids – hand feeding, nappies and entertaining – possibly as little as 10 hours.
So why do we spend those precious few spare hours each week doing so many things so badly?
To save a few bucks, we do amazingly stupid things. We try to be accountants with our own taxes. We have badly performing share and super portfolios. We garden, we iron, we cook and we clean.
Here’s the seven idiocies that come with taking a DIY approach to your broader life. You will:
- Get things wrong (investment decisions)
- Cost yourself money (accounting)
- Stress about it (paying bills)
- Take far longer to do it and still stuff it up (home DIY).
- End up being stiff and sore for two days (gardening)
- Miss the grand adventures in a dollhouse or playing in a park (ironing, cooking, housework, etc)
- Wear the blame with the wife/husband when things go wrong and fail to get credit when you get it right (everything you take responsibility for)
The whole point of earning money is to buy yourself time. Buy yourself time by spending now, or time later, in retirement.
Yes, hiring professionals to do “stuff” has a cost. And no-one’s budget is limitless. Except maybe Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s.
So, if you’re a time-poor family, have a stressed executive in the household, wonder how your “baby” got to high school when she was only in creche yesterday, used to have an enviable garden, can’t remember the last movie you saw at a cinema, still haven’t met the “lovely” couple who moved in next door five years ago, your dog doesn’t remember that you used to love him, you can’t remember how to work the DVD, have a share portfolio filled with dud stocks, never got around to fixing your super, never get a big tax return … then you know what to do.
Do yourself a favour. Pick a job you know you don’t do well. Preferably one you hate. Pay someone to do it. And give it six months. Objectively assess whether a better job has been done. Cheaper, faster and better.
Heck, if it isn’t, you can always sack them and take back control. I doubt you will.
Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and a licensed financial adviser. bruce@debtman.com.au .