How Much Is Your Time Worth?

I have always been a frugal person.  Growing up we never had a lot of money.  That's not to say that I ever felt poor or deprived.  My family was so great it always felt like, "Well...we've got each other, and that's all we need."  But subconsciously I developed an inner mantra that I wasn't always fully aware was at play: "You can do it cheaper by doing it yourself."

Now that works out for me in a lot of ways.  Being artistically capable allows me to design things, paint things, decorate a certain way, etc., and doing so saves me money.  The same usually applies for home repair.  It's easy to put a new wax ring on a toilet than it is to hire a plumber.  Over the years I've built up skills that enable me to do some a great deal of cosmetic work (new tile, new sheetrock, etc.) and some more serious repairs/alterations (i.e., minor electrical and plumbing).  Having these skills usually saves me money.  It does not, however, save me time.

In my Minnesota days I had a friend named Josh, and he was the first to challenge my thinking on the matter.  The main criterion, he suggested, for determining which projects to undertake was not which way was more expensive (hire someone or do it myself) but how much time would it cost me.  He tried to get me to see that my time was worth a great deal.  Essentially, if I could make $20 an hour by painting and selling works, I would actually be LOSING money by NOT hiring someone who would "only" cost me $15/hr.  In his thinking, it's a better choice to do something I love, which I'm good at, which could bring me some income, rather than give that up to do something I will bumble through.  Better to hire someone who is an expert and free myself up to use my expertise.  It has never replaced my frugal mindset, but it has tempered it.

Never before (NEVER, I tell you) have I felt capable of fixing anything automotive.  Sure, I've changed a flat.  But in the auto realm, the "save yourself time and money by hiring someone" mentality always wins over the "do it yourself" mentality.

Until the sunroof.

Brandi has a sunroof on her Trailblazer that stopped working.  That type of repair is apparently one of the most expensive there is.  So I threw my hat in the ring.  I gave it a shot.  And I fixed it.  Sort of.  I was able to get it to close with the replacement parts I ordered.  When the part broke, it damaged more than one part of the mechanism.  Basically, it looks like I'll be replacing the rest of it over Spring or Summer break.  That's not terrible, because now I know how to do it.  But for the three or four days (spaced out over several weeks) that I worked on the sunroof, it was a chore.

Is there a silver lining in these seemingly pointless story?  Sure.  1) I kind of fixed an automotive issue.  2) Even better, it motivated me to compensate for the time spent on the repair by dragging my keister out to the studio and painting.  It's been good to return to painting.  And it's been good to ask myself again, "How much did that repair really cost me?  How much is my time worth?"