When I gave my one year blog update, I asked if there were any topics readers wanted me to cover in year two.
One reader commented and asked:
During your professional career, what tasks did you outsource? Which did you DIY? Income tax returns, lawn care, window washing, haircuts, oil changes, Christmas shopping, shoe polishing, car washes โ what did you do yourself? What did family members do? What did you hire out?
So this post will be a (probably) not so complete list of what we did, what the kids did, and what we outsourced. If I miss anything you can ask about it in the comments and I’ll fill in the blanks.
What We Did
Overall we were mostly DIYers. Why pay someone else when we could do it ourselves? As such, here are the tasks we did:
- Household tasks — My wife handled most of the inside stuff and I handled the outside stuff. She cooked and cleaned, did the laundry, etc. I mowed, snow plowed the driveway (the worst in Michigan — 100 inches of snow many years), landscaped (I grew roses), and took care of the trash. I also did most of the easy house repairs and waged the never-ending war against mice (we had woods right behind our house). BTW, I offered to hire a house cleaner on several occasions and my wife refused each time. She said she didn’t want someone else cleaning her house but I’m thinking she didn’t want to spend the money.
- Hair — I’ve shaved my head for the past 15 years or so. I prefer it to going to the salon (the time kills me), it’s easier to manage (especially during my swimming years), and it saves us $15-$20 a pop. $15 each time with a haircut every 6 weeks for 15 years equals a couple thousand dollars!
- Christmas shopping — I did most of it as well as the wrapping. Once my daughter got old enough to help we did it together and she eventually took over the whole thing. (She likes knowing in advance what everyone is getting. Plus she’s pretty good at it.)
- Shoe polishing — I polished my own shoes, but polishing wasn’t a frequent occurrence.
- Finances — I managed our finances pretty much from the time we got married. I know, you’re shocked. ๐
What Kids Did
Once the kids got old enough we put them to work. Here’s what they did:
- Household tasks — Each kid had his or her chores — washing dishes, doing laundry, dusting, vacuuming, etc. When they each got their own bathrooms they had to clean them as well.
- Mowing — Once my son turned 10 or so I taught him the fine art of mowing passed on from the previous generation. I haven’t mowed a lawn since.
- Snow blowing/plowing — Once my son got old enough, he also helped clean the driveway and sidewalk after snowstorms. He mostly did the sidewalks while I did the driveway, though for only a couple of inches of snow we both worked on the driveway and could have it done in no time.
What Others Did
We did outsource some things including:
- Taxes — As you know, we use a CPA to do our taxes. As you also know, this still requires a good bit of work from me.
- Some lawn care — We had a guy spray our lawn for weeds the last two years we lived in Michigan. They had gotten out of control, he was a friend (great price!), and he got rid of them.
- Hair — My wife and kids had a friend of my wife’s do their hair. The friend gave us a great rate.
- Window washing — Once every couple of years we did hire a family friend with a window washing business to take care of our windows.
- Higher end maintenance and landscaping — I do not do plumbing, electricity, or any major maintenance (like putting in a new home heating system). We also hired a company to take down some trees and plant some new plants around the house.
- Car maintenance — Never did it myself. I do not want to be in any car that I’ve worked on.
That’s all I could think of. Let me know what I missed and I’ll comment below.
Also, how do you differ from this? What do you do and what do you outsource?
photo credit: woodleywonderworks a day every father dreams of via photopin (license)
Erik @ The Mastermind Within says
Being single and having no kids, I do many of the chores listed above. I actually enjoy mowing the lawn, but as time goes on, I’ve realized I could probably pay a kid to do it for $10 bucks…
I definitely am in the same situation as you on higher end maintenance and landscaping. In November, I fixed the grading around my house. I spent about $5,500 to have a team come out and lay dirt and stone around my house to ensure water won’t get into my basement.
I didn’t know you were good at managing finances…. ๐
Coopersmith says
When I was younger I did a lot of maintenance items myself. Changed oil, did brake jobs and would just about repair anything on a car. Same around the house. Hated doing plumbing but saved plenty there by DYI, built and installed kitchen cabinets in my first house. Electrical wiring and switching out switches and light fixtures. I use to do much more than I do now.
Now I am more concerned about safety and injury. I could climb on the roof and clean my gutters but if I were to fall I would take months to recover or seriously hurt myself and never fully recover.
Also now my time is more valuable than what I can hire someone to do. I hired a friends son to paint my garage at $10 an hour and it took him 12 hours. That is 12 hours added to my day that I did not have to spend painting.
When I was young I was time rich and cash poor. Now I am the opposite in that I have the money the spend and my time is more valuable to me than the money saved.
The Green Swan says
I’ve gotten a kick out of DIY lately and try that first above all else. These may sound like small things, but they are huge accomplishments to me: recently I successfully replaced the ice maker in our freezer, fixed a dripping kitchen faucet, and just this weekend avoided a $40 home visit with Time Warner Cable to “activate” coax cables in certain rooms in the house (figured out online how to do this myself!).
10 sounds like a good year to get the kids mowing…7 more years left…can’t wait to never mow again either! ๐
George says
I’m actually a tad surprised you don’t do your own car maintenance, but I also believe it’s probably better for everyone if I don’t work on my own cars. My father in law is always appalled by this ๐
Man you are spot on re: haircuts. I’m so bad about going b/c it takes so much time. I really like the place I go because it is close to where I work and they are good, but it is at least 1 hour of my time to go there! Last time I went I actually pulled out my laptop and got some work done because it was such a long wait.
Here’s an oddball one that hopefully you don’t have to deal with: Our city stopped picking up glass recycling. Among my friends, I’m notoriously frugal so they can’t believe I pay someone 7$ a month to pickup our glass.There is a recycling place ~10 minutes from my house. But I know if I pay someone else to do it, it will get done versus me procrastinating and the glass just piling up. And I’m supporting a local small business, which is fun.
Laurie says
We do most everything on your list except cleaning. We outsource cleaning and have someone come in once a week. I feel a bit conflicted about spending $200 a month on a cleaner, but my husband is adament that we do it. I’m not a very motivated cleaner, and he doesn’t want to spend his weekends vaccumming and sweeping. Right now, I’m going with the theory that it frees up some mental bandwidth to save money in other areas! ๐
Mark Baxter says
I definitely outsource the cleaning. Best decision I ever made. It really does free up the mental resources for other things, not to mention a clean house really does improve my state of mind.
Jim says
The only thing we’ve outsourced is our taxes and my haircuts, though I don’t consider me cutting my hair an option. That said, I cut our son’s hair and that’s pretty much a #2 all around in the summer and a left a little longer in the winter. I hate how long haircuts take too.
Full Time Finance says
As someone who is a car nut, I’ve still largely dropped car maintenance from my list. Price competition in the market is so thorough I just can’t justify the cost savings of me doing it, unless its something I would enjoy like a new project.
Pretty much the rest of the list I do myself. We did have a indoor cleaning service before my wife left her job. Our decision on outsourcing ultimately comes down to whether the savings is in the ball park per hour of our salaries. If its not close to that cost, its worth outsourcing (unless I enjoy doing it)
Amanda @ centsiblyrich says
We are much the same and DIY most things. Where we differ – Alan does the basic car maintenance (oil changes, changed the transmission fluid yesterday) and some plumbing. He taught me to wire outlets when we refinished our basement – so I wired all the outlets in the basement. It’s been two years and they still work :). That said, we hire out some things we have limited knowledge on (or don’t want to take the time to do) – we had a mini split unit (heating/ac) installed in our sun room and paid for some drywall work in our basement. It’s all a matter of how much we can save and if we have the skills/time to do the task.
indio says
I do the lawn myself because I view it as a chance to get exercise. Not sure why I should outsource something that is keeping me active and healthy. Same for snow shoveling and car washing.
I paint the interior of the house myself but outsource exterior paint jobs because they usually require lots of ladders. I clean the gutters myself because that only takes about an hour to do and I can do it wheneve I want some outdoors time. Clean house, wash clothes, cook food and do dishes, cut kids hair all by myself. It’s my opportunity to not sit in front of a TV or laptop, and it doesn’t really cost me much in time because it’s streamlined. Kids help with all of the chores and we can spend time chatting while cooking, cleaning or hanging up the laundry. Don’t pay for high school math tutor because I need to dust off the brain cells and watch Khan academy till I remember it and can explain it.
Do my own taxes because they aren’t complicated and I like knowing specifically what is costing me money.
Car maintenance is the only activity that I entirely outsource.
David D says
We pretty much do everything ourselves, except for haircuts and the DIY job that gets too big for me (i.e. anything involved with getting on a second story roof). We don’t use our cars much, so I don’t mind trying to do some of the work on our cars (i.e. spark plugs, brakes, oil changes, etc…). I feel better when I do the work, as I know it was done right.
We have had our cars professionally cleaned/detailed two times in our lives and it was great. We would never do it regularly though. Maybe never again…who knows. We have toyed with the idea of a house cleaner many times, but have never been willing to give up the $$ it would require.
Mr. Zero @ The divide by zero says
I am very reticent to outsource anything I can do myself even though we certainly have the funds to do so.
Outsource:
– Oil changes: I have done it myself before, but this one exceeds the PITA/Cost criteria.
– Haircuts: My wife cut my hair once. ๐
– Taxes: Becasue I am on an expat assignment with my company, my taxes are extremely complicated. Prior to our expat assignment we did our taxes ourselves.
– Major Home Repairs: Paid someone to put a new roof on my house. Paid someone to replace our heat pump. Both far exceed the PITA/Cost threshold.
DIY:
– Home repairs and improvements: I once took a week vacation to remove an ugly brick fireplace, replace it with something more modern looking and to install 1000 sqft of hardwood floors.
– Grass mowing, landscaping, etc…
– Car washes
– Home cleaning: Why else would we have had three kids?
– Money management/Investing: I have never met an investment advisor that was worth the cost. It’s like an ad I saw recently on my FB feed for an automated trading app. If the app was so great, the people who developed it would not need to bother selling it.
Stephen says
We have quit doing the majority of our cleaning since we just had a baby. I had the brilliant idea of buying a good Roomba from Costco $650(wife thought it was too expensive at the time) and run that every other day since we have 2 dogs and 3 cats + have cleaning ladies come over once a month for $125 each time.
She could not be happier now.