How do you accurately put a price on your time? When does a project take too long to be an economically poor decision? What is my time REALLY worth?
For example, if I replace the head gasket in my car with very basic and minimal knowledge or skill in that field, at what point do I sink too much time into it for it to be a waste of money? The shop takes 6 hours and charges $1600, but it takes me 30 hours over a few weekends to do the same for $500 in tools and parts. I don't actually save any money at that point, do I? Or renovating a kitchen? Or installing a fence?
The value of the time is too general a concept.
A better metric is opportunity cost.
>fix car for 30 hours, or go to work and make money at $50/hr
Now that would be obvious, you would be up $100 if you pay the garage while you go earn money.
>fix car, or play video games
In this scenario you save $1,100 by working on the car instead.
So it depends on what you are planning to do with those 30 hours. Is working on your car going remove an opportunity to do something more valuable?
Wealthy people think in opportunity costs and plan their lives around that theory. Poor people don't understand economics at all.
Your choice.
>So it depends on what you are planning to do with those 30 hours. Is working on your car going remove an opportunity to do something more valuable?
This is the big brain shit right here.
Poor people think "ahhh shit what am I going to do today?", middle class people think "ahhh shit what's going to stop me from making money today, and is it worth it or nah?"
If you aren't plotting out every hour of your day in terms of gain/loss you're going to be renting for the rest of your life
I get paid $150k on salary, I don't need to plan how to make more money in my free time to live a middle class lifestyle. I don't want to spend any more time than I already do working for someone else.
Lol, low expectations Black person. Fine, frick off then, keep living in the poor part of town with all the other browns.
>plotting out every hour of your day in terms of gain/loss
Definition of rat race right there
You can plan to relax too if that is valuable to you.
Do you really just wake up and randomly go about your day with no pre-planning the day before?
idk for me every day is mostly the same so I don't need to plan much. I just write down what I need to get done soon and pick from that.
>If you aren't plotting out every hour of your day in terms of gain/loss you're going to be renting for the rest of your life
That's pretty antisemitic of you pal. Apologize right now.
I sometimes do projects for the experience alone.
As a general rule I'll do a project if I think I can do it as well as the pros, and the cost of the parts+tools does not cost more than double what the pros charge. I'm happy to own the tools and make my money back later. And no, I don't factor my imaginary hourly rate. It's a false equivocation.
If you're somehow losing hours at your job to work on your car, you should probably just pay the pro.
I consider the money I save while getting my desired result at the time and place of my choosing. I've been a lifelong professional and hobby mechanic/technician so everything I do is also useful experience speeding/improving future processes. "Time" spent leisurely working on a vehicle etc is not the same as time spent working at a commercial pace.
^This
DIY is an income effectiveness multiplier:
There are no other vintage British motorbike mechanics in my area and I do other specialty work it would be insane to pay for. For example I just bought two industrial Saylor-Beall compressors and two industrial buffers from a plating shop (plus three mostly full acetylene B tanks and two torches for $30) for ~500 bucks and a day spent loading that plus a load of steel and cabinets bought by my bro. We spent about seven hours leisurely getting all that home. Our home shops are improved thereby for vastly less than diverting cash to buy new, and we wallow in equipment we can easily resell if ever needed.
We'd be nuts to pay someone to build and outfit our home machine shops but we do that for fun lowering the cost while enabling us to make what we will. After you get good car, home and everything else repair and maintenance is easy if sometimes tedious.
I don't take risks, I solve risk issues before I begin. Not hard and not needing to work at a commercial pace makes solving problems in detail quite painless. For example my back is destroyed so instead of carrying roof coating pails up scaffold I threw a crude jib on a pipe vertical from scrap, hung a Harbor Freight gambrel off that and pulled my pails up from the ground with negative back strain. Read the USMC rigging manual (free online) for many slick ways to solve problems. Tying off for safety is easy but I chose homes with shallow roof pitches for easy long term maintenance (a very good reason to own a ranch house).
My time is worthless
I get paid salary so the value of my time is rather abstract, the value of my output is more important. I don't have clients or paying work just waiting for me to pick up when I'm not busy so time outside work hours is not really time I could be making more money.
I consider any education that furthers your self sufficiency to be worthwhile so I would take the time to DIY a repair even if it takes much longer than s hired pro, unless there's a good chance I'll injure myself or break something in the process. And even then, sometimes you got to take risks to get shit done. Home repairs especially since it's basically impossible to hire anyone to do them anymore.
>I get paid salary
Well there you go, that's the value of your time. A normal person works 2000 hours a year, based on $150k your hourly rate is around $75.
>I get paid $150k on salary, I don't need to plan how to make more money in my free time
That's on you. If you chose to spend your time doing things that you enjoy then ask yourself if you enjoy fixing that head gasket.
Also at the very least you could calculate your hourly cost of living (it's higher than you think) and use that as the actual cost for changing that head gasket over 30 hours.
I make around the same and personally if the job can be done with simple tools and minimal training I do it myself, anything that requires specialized tools or training goes to a professional with insurance. Head gasket involves pulling the engine out, taking off the front cover and timing chains and then re-timing the engine after, it's a major job that will take way over 30 hours for some one who doesn't know what they are doing and can result in a destroyed engine if done wrong.
Illeterate monkeys can do home renovations so that automatically goes into the self category.
>Head gasket involves pulling the engine out
The only cars I've really worked on are my two trucks, my mother's 2000 Focus, and my grandmother's Lincoln.
What is this modern hell where you can't access most/all of the cylinder head without pulling the entire engine out?
You also need to factor in doing the job correctly, vs having a brown "person" hastily and poorly do your car job
Many mechanics and especially motorbike mechanics became such because they tired of being assraped. It makes riding your collection cheap and easy. No one else in my area works on them let alone well.
No matter what the job is, the smug euphoria I feel from not paying someone else to do something is worth ten times the dollar cost.
And you know maybe you learn something maybe it's useful, maybe it's not, but it's something to do.
What would you otherwise be doing? Watching tv? Playing vidya? Yeah if you want to do those things you can, it's up to you. I dont enjoy doing them particularly as much as I like making or fixing things, it's truly a hobby in itself.
Trying to weigh the cost against your own time is also stupid unless you work three jobs.
DIY is generally about satisfaction. If you enjoy it, it's fine to spend as mich time as you need, it's a hobby. If you don't, set a value for your time and figure out if it's worth it.
Empowerment matters because learning is cumulative.
Self and bro are attending a house moving company liquidation tomorrow because we want a few parts most others will not, but that steel will save us hundreds or thousands on our workshops. (I formed my building slab with large I-beam I bartered for at nil cost to me and a few hours work rewiring an old dump truck, that got me a foundation without needing to erect forms or buy wood. My bro plans the same.) We have simple equipment to make loading my trailer easy and if we need to shorten beam etc for transport we can torch cut it then weld it back together if desired.
Labor for the shit we do for ourselves is easily 100 bucks an hour and no one else has our specific vision so we do it easily and quickly. When you get good your learning accelerates rapidly! We rebuild engines for fun but it saves a mint.
Our disposable income goes much farther, our necessity overhead shrinks to not shit and we get precisely what we want. We accrued so many good running vehicles for pocket change (sometimes free) we give them to each other. When you're part of a capable gearhead network everyone wins.
>use steel i beams for forming a fricking slab
Or sell the i Beam and buy wood with it..
I don't count how much money I can make for myself, but how little I can for others.
Frick taxes and frick the man!
Just overbid the frick out of every job and when they b***h say, "hey, I'm a nice guy, I know things are tight, I can work you". Then they think they're getting a favor
My time is $135 for the fist half hour , then $45 per quarter hour after. That's technically what it's worth. I do my own car stuff though because it makes me feel good to know I'm maintaining and tuning my own vehicles. In fact, this weekend I'm putting a new alternator on my 650i. $180 for an alternator and probably like 6 hrs vs $1100 a shop quoted me that's like 10x the money lol
>That's technically what it's worth.
How did you get that number?
Since I don't work on other peoples cars or houses outside of family I look at it as how long it takes me along with any tools needed vs. how much would it cost to pay someone.
My day job is about $40/ hour before taxes.
For example replacing the AC compressor, condenser, lines, evaporator, ect. on my car is about $700 or $1000 at the dealership.
I can get the parts from rockauto for $275 tax included. I have $425 to break even on. The job takes me like 4 hours on a Saturday.
I "made" about $100/hr doing it myself, even more if I took it to the dealership.
Another: Water heater on it's last legs, cheapest quote is $1,800 to put some shitty AO Smith from Lowes in. Frick that, go the the plumbing supply store with the specific part and model number of Bradford White water heater and BS around not being a "licensed plumber". $742 tax included out the door. Crimp connections plus the tool and other stuff was like $150 ish. Bam, $900 total. took me 15 hours over two days so $60/hr minimum and I got a better water heater.
The other cut off for me is something that requires more than one person or is perceptually dangerous to do alone.
>The other cut off for me is something that requires more than one person or is perceptually dangerous to do alone.
Given some creativity and thorough study there is really very little you can't do safely alone.
How much you wanna make /mo? There's your accurate time price... Is it competitive, though?
There will never be a static number, just think up the type of future you want of your life and use money as a means to bring that about. If my remaining time could be sold for a profit the sum would have to overshadow the personal losses, not necessarily make up for them.
There are times with wealth for no good reason and times when you let yourself be gouged for minor commodities. If you wish to live frugally the question shouldn't be how you measure your income, but how to avoid desperation and snowball your profits.
>I don't actually save any money at that point, do I?
Well you do, unless you would otherwise spend 30 hours doing something that makes more than then $1100 discrepancy.
Factor your personal interests in on top of that. I replaced my muffler and saved some money, but it took me 6 hours between walking to the store for tools/parts and also rusted nuts/bolts. The real reason I did it is the learning experience (and to save the social anxiety of calling a mechanic).
>Well you do, unless you would otherwise spend 30 hours doing something that makes more than then $1100 discrepancy.
The money you save DIYing is available for other use.
You also save time and money not having to find a mechanic, drop off and recover your vehicle or wait for the work to be done on the spot, and are not deprived of a work day getting the repair done.
If I find a problem I can often correct it on the spot. I would waste far more time driving to have routine maintenance done vs. doing it myself (and not risking my precious drain plug threads at lube joints). A driveway oil change takes me little time and I have uses for the drain oil as chainsaw bar oil, weatherproofing dunnage etc.
Doing it yourself costs $500 and 30 hours, but it also gives you knowledge and experience which can help you in the future. If you don’t care for that, then don’t take it into account, but I do care.
Remember that Labor hours which the shop uses are based on a book and access to a database of repairs which means unless the repair is not timed out correctly the actual amount of labor is probably less than they state.
That being said, replacing a head gasket is not a 500 dollar job unless the gasket is super unique. The tools are also not very complicated (mostly some ratchets and sockets). I would also say that every dollar you do not need to hand someone else for a job that you as a layman can do is value you can create out of nothing. Once you have replaced one head gasket and demystified the problems than if you ever have another car with a blown head gasket or really any other gasket repair you should be able replace it much easier and at no additional cost to you.
Most DIY projects will give you much better knowledge about how something is made or set up. I would think about it like that, the knowledge is worth more than the actual labor.
Depends on how you spend your time.
>Spend $1600 to have someone else do it
>Save 30 hrs of time that I spend on useful things like mastering a skill or somehow earning cash
Smart choice
>Spend 30 hours and $500 to do it myself
>Save $1100 cash and become slightly more skilled and knowledgeable in the process
Also a smart choice
>Spend 1600 to have someone else do it
>Frick off and waste time, gaining zero experience and making zero measurable profit
Boomer choice