Dan John in his book 'Never Let Go' provided a great example of how we only have a limited amount of freewill to give each day and our standard of living is essentially determined by the amount of freewill we have left at the end of each day to do the things we enjoy. Naturally this caught my eye, and I developed a new way of living through attaining as much freewill as I could, while ensuring sustainable improved long term cash flows. I like to call this Life Economics. I've been privileged to both be well read, with a degree to allow me to work in the financial sector, and have a range of blue collar skills that I can make some cash on and save a lot of cash with. Aside from doing all my taxation and financial work, saving a bit of cash on brokerage and agent fees and conducting accurate cost/benefit analysis, my biggest cash cows are the DIY repairs & maintenance that I undertake as well as bulk 'production' i.e. cooking and shopping. I measure in terms of both time-savings (freewill) as well as cost-savings (opportunity benefits). To give some examples of the past 12 months: Cost saving of approx. $2500 through DIY vehicle repairs & maintenance (blown head gasket, differential gasket replacement, general maintenace). One-off benefit. Bulk cooking generating several hours of additional freewill for both myself and my partner. Benefits in perpetuity. Acquisition of home gym. Outlay of $2500, annual saving of $1800 in perpetuity. Refurbishment of furniture picked up from wreckers, recyclers and garage sales. Total cost of $150, savings on new of almost $1000. One-off benefit. The list is ongoing and I have estimated my net savings this year will be somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000 and several hundred hours, expected to increase next year. We are saving a significant amount of our take-home pays to generate some real savings that we can naturally direct in the right direction - paying down our mortgage. I have established this thread for all to share their ideas, ask questions, provide constructive criticisms, etc. to improve your and my Life Economics.
Thanks for sharing. Good to see you here. I'm actually quite the opposite of the Do-it-yourselfer. I just had a new home built with a large home gym, but that was more for convenience and for those days I don't feel like leaving the house to go to the gym or dealing with any gym idiots. That aside, I pretty much outsource just about everything other than the one or two things I actually do very well.
Great share indeed, and much appreciated. I think that many times we indulge oneself and our loved ones too much, even if it is only buying a coffee from time to time at your closest Starbucks coffee shop. If we would pay attention to economics before spending indiscriminately, our finances would be healthier than they are actually.
Nice read, maybe a little obvious that you would save if you did things on your own, butthat begs the question "then why don't more people do it?". One possible explanation could be that in a demanding job, one may not find the time or energy (or want to spend any extra energy) working on this.
This was a great read. I am a lot like JR Ewing. I don't quite have a gym in my house. But, I seldom fix anything by myself.
I have never read this book before, but you are selling it, I think that it absolutely sounds like it is worth a read. I will give it a shot. I always try to save money by doing projects by myself and fixing my car and things around the house. I haven't read this book, but I do know the importance of applying life economics.
I believe it comes down to the value of your time. What is an hour of your time really worth? What do you earn per working hour? Once you know what the value of your time is; you can decide how to allocate it. For example; suppose the value of an hour of my time is $100. If something is going to cost me more than $100 per hour to do, then I should do it myself, however if it costs less than $100 then I should pay somebody else to do it and rather spend the hour earning $100. Sometimes people think they are saving money DIY'ing when it could be costing them many hours that they could be using more productively. I call it "time value of money".
Thank you for sharing this. I am going to get the book. I am always looking for new ways to save myself time and money. Life is short and we all could use some advice as to be more efficient.
We are working on doing more ourselves to save money and some of the easiest things that we have done is to start freezer cooking (same as bulk cooking essentially) and we bought some used exercise equipment. We only grocery shop once a month and we have planted a really large garden this year. You do have to place some value on your time though, and there are some things that it is just easier and more efficient to pay someone else to do.
