John SchneiderConsider how much you’re paid per hour. Then, consider how many hours a week you spend on tasks that you’d rather not do or that distract you from higher-paying opportunities. Are you saving money or losing money by doing jobs for yourself that someone else might do more efficiently?
It’s somewhat counterintuitive to think that hiring someone to do things you can do for yourself may be better for your money and your family. However, if you’re paid $30/hour, does it make sense to perform a task that someone else can do for $15/hour? No. It makes more sense to continue working for $30/hour, pay someone else $15/hour. You still net $15.
Of course, most of us can’t contract our every routine task, but even freeing ourselves of one such task can produce great results. Here are nine tasks you may want to outsource to have more money.
Grocery shopping.
Once upon a time, having your groceries delivered to your house was only for the richest of the rich. Today, it’s way more popular for even us commoners to have groceries delivered to our houses or ready for pick-up at the grocery store.
When I go to our local grocery store lately, there are as many Amazon shoppers as there are actual patrons. I think this is a good thing.
Grocery shopping is mundane and can take up way more time than it’s worth. Companies such as Amazon, InstaCart, and Peapod save hundreds of thousands of people from this chore and letting them focus on higher returning activities.
Cooking.
My husband and I love cooking, but with building a business and him still working a W-2, we just don’t have the time. We don’t want to resort to fast food because we like to eat healthily. Therefore, we hired a personal chef. Before you start claiming that we’re the richest of the rich, just know that personal chefs can be reasonably priced.
We hired a personal chef who recently graduated from culinary school and she’s building her resume. We’re happy to have her experiment on us. It saves us money and time and is helping her start her career. Once a week, she comes to our house and cooks several lunches and dinners for us that require minimal preparation on our part. Our diet is healthy and diverse.
You don’t have to hire a personal chef, though. Hello Fresh and Blue Apron deliver meals direct to your door. Bigger cities are even getting their own meal delivery services. In Denver, we have The Spicy Radish. A simple Google search may help you find a local delivery service in your area.
These services provide a healthy, diverse menu that requires minimal involvement on your part. It’s one less thing to think about that day, which reserves your time for more important thinking, and the meals save a great deal of time preparing.
House cleaning.
How much time each week do you spending cleaning your home? Or, when was the last time your home was clean? What would you rather be doing, or how could you better spend your time?
I love my cleaning ladies! I love a clean house, but I don’t love cleaning. The toilet bowl needs to be clean, but I’d rather spend my time building my business and with my husband. The last thing I want to do with the few spare hours a week I have is clean my toilets.
This helps the economy and others, in addition to helping me. I spend my time making money doing what I do best and pay someone else to do what they do best. Plus, they do in two hours what would take my husband and me six hours.
Home repairs & maintenance.
This is exactly what I did recently. My husband and I decided it’s time to sell our condo. Before we put our place on the market, we decided we needed to do some touch-ups and repairs to our place.
None of it is major work, but it would take a major amount of our time if we did them ourselves. We’re capable of doing them, but we’re not proficient. Plus, we’re growing a business, and our time is better spent growing our business than painting, scraping, and sanding.
Therefore, we’ve contracted out most of the work. My husband and I each make more money per hour than what we’re paying any of these professionals per hour. Plus, they do a better job.
Everyday errands.
Do you have a bunch of errands you’d love to take off your plate? Need pictures hung on your wall? Need that new Ikea furniture to be put together? Urgently need something delivered across town but can’t get away from your desk?
Your time and money are better spent closing your next deal and hiring someone from Task Complete or TaskRabbit to complete your task. Thousands of people are freelancing to do simple to complex tasks for others as a side hustle.
Travel arrangements.
Have a big trip planned but haven’t planned it? Let someone better skilled, better educated on travel and better connected to plan it for you. Sure, you can book your flight from St. Paul to Austin, but what about the bigger trips to Playa del Carmen or Lisbon or Sydney?
For bigger travel, we always use our travel agent. We’ve had her for years. We don’t pay more than we would if we booked all the travel ourselves, but she uses her systems and connections to make better accommodations for us. She finds those hidden deals and gets us the special perks that we wouldn’t know about or think to ask.
This saves us money or gets us more for our money while we’re still working for our money.
Email and calendar management.
For some people, it makes sense to hire an assistant to manage personal emails and calendars, book reservations or plan an event. Get Friday offers personal assistants that can handle all matters from personal to professional.
Managing personal emails has nearly become a full-time job. Managing all that you do along with yours and your family’s personal calendars is like herding cats. Hire someone to help you become more efficient and organized, then you’ll waste less of your precious time on little tasks.
Lawn maintenance & gardening.
After putting in 40 to 60 hours a week, some people like being outside and working in their garden. Others, like me, hate it.
Free up your personal time by hiring someone from CraigsList or Angie’s List to take better care of your lawn and garden with better equipment and skill than you. They’ll do a better and faster job, and you’ll be freed to relax and rejuvenate alone or with your family or spend more time making more money.
Laundry.
Laundry is another task that many of us would do well to pay someone else to do. The cost to have someone pick up, launder, and then return your laundry can range between $1 to $3 a pound. For many people, this often equates to $20 to $25 per week. If you’re like me, you spend more than that on a bottle of wine on a Wednesday night.
Plus, with their equipment, they can clean your clothing better and more properly. Likewise, they can save you countless hours of folding, so you can spend more hours growing your business and bank account.
We may love the idea of saving a few dollars here and there by doing certain tasks ourselves, but when you look at both sides of your personal balance sheet, it may make more economic sense to pay someone to do some of these tasks for you. You might save $20 doing a job yourself, but you could earn $30 by hiring someone to do it for you, and that’s money.
Do you outsource personal tasks we haven’t listed here? What are the pros or cons you’ve found? Let us know in the #Adulting Facebook community.
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