Whatever you decide to do to save
money, both large and small changes can add up
quickly. I once heard somewhere, “You can't be poor AND lazy.”
So, when my ancient washing machine quit agitating, I had choices. I
could:
- Call a repairman, most everyone's first choice;
- Throw out the old washer and buy a new one (EEK!), the spendthrift's first choice; or
- Quit assuming I wasn't smart enough to fix a washing machine.
I Googled the machine's make, model
number and “won't agitate,” and within five minutes had a
plausible answer. Opening the top of the agitator, I confirmed that
some little plastic cogs had worn down. The next day, I bought them
for $4.85 at a local appliance repair shop. It took me 15 minutes to
take apart the top of the agitator, clean out the pieces of the old
cogs, slip the new ones into place and put everything back together
again. The washer was good as new.
If I had paid a repairman to come to my
house, it would have been $85 for the service call (I did call a
local company, just to find out in case I couldn't fix it – there's
that self-doubt again). They would then charged $50 an hour for labor
(minimum of one hour), and I have no idea how much they would have
marked up the parts, so let's keep the parts at $4.85. If the
repairman fixed the washer in the same amount of time it took me, the
minimum bill would have been $139.85. My total was about $15
including gas (I live 20 miles from the repair shop), so I saved
$124.85, but that's not the important thing. The work I did in 15
minutes was worth $139.85, taking my hourly wage to $559.40 ($139.85
x 4, the number of times 15 minutes goes into 60).
That's the really high end of hourly
wages. On the other end, there's clothesline vs. dryer ($6.00/hr) or
keeping chickens ($5.16/hr, accounting for feed but not water because
I use rainwater). Those low hourly wages are worth it to me for other
reasons, though, so I'm willing to spend my time doing them for less
than my base hourly wage (which I usually set at about $10/hr.). If
it's not important to me and my hourly wage doesn't make the work
worthwhile, I pay someone else to do it. I don't change the oil in
our trucks because the hourly wage turns out to be less than $10/hr
after buying the oil and filter. Also, I have a five-year-old running
around and don't like to be under a pickup when he's with me. If you
like getting used engine oil on your hands, don't mind finding a
place to dispose of it, and don't have small children who want to
crawl under there and “help,” it might be worthwhile to change
your own oil.
Then again, you could always use a
(*gasp!*) coupon for an oil change, which would bring your hourly
wage way down or into negative numbers and just doesn't make DIY the
sensible choice. Coupons ARE good for some things...
2 comments:
How do you figure your hourly wage for the other jobs you mentioned? You got me curious!
Well, for laundry it all depends on how ancient your dryer is and how much electricity you have to buy for a full cycle. I confess, I haven't figured this wage since we moved and got a different (free) dryer; this is based on 50 cents per load to dry vs. free to hang on the line. For the chickens, I factor in average egg production per day at the cost of organic, free range eggs in the store, then subtract the cost of feed and bedding (which I buy). The hourly wage is based on an average 15 minutes I spend each day cleaning waterers, feeding, collecting eggs and cleaning the coop. This might not work for everyone; my chooks are free range and, therefore, pretty self-sufficient.
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