Photo by Brooks Elliot
To me, being frugal is all about being in control of my life, making decisions that leave me with enough money to live my life comfortably without the specter of debt hanging over my head. Being frugal (and life in general for that matter) involves a lot of choices. One of the biggest I seem to face on a regular basis is time vs money.
Many of the things we all do to save money involve trading your time for money. Comparison shopping, keeping a price book, cooking from scratch, gardening, hanging laundry out on the line, making your own cleaners and laundry detergent all take time.
Only you can decide in a particular situation which is worth more to you. But how do you compare the two? One helpful method some people employ to help them conceptualize how much their time is worth is to compare it to their hourly take home wage.
Just for the sake of argument, let's say that a person makes $30,000 a year approximately. That is around $14 an hour. I'm not sure exactly what all the taxes etc work out to, but again, just for the sake of argument let's assume that take home pay winds up to be closer to $10 an hour.
Example #1: Making your own laundry soap (recipe in this video blog post).
Once I have the ingredients on hand and using my food processor it takes me about 10 minutes of hands on time to make my own laundry soap. I calculate* it costs me about $.07 a load for homemade. Let's assume your regular detergent runs you about $.25 a load. So if the batch of laundry soap I make lasts about 2 months, with approx 5 loads of laundry done each week. That is 40 loads of laundry times a savings of $.18 a load or a savings of $7.20
10 minutes of effort (worth about $2.50) can save me $7.20 or about 45 minutes of work outside the home.
Example #2: Cleaning Your House.
Lets say you have the option of cleaning your house yourself. For vacuuming, mopping, bathrooms, kitchen and dusting I'm estimating would take about 3 hours of your time** or $30. To pay a house cleaner might average about $50 a week. On the surface the most frugal thing is obvious-cleaning your own house is cheaper even if you take your "hourly wage" into account.
But what if you just absolutely detest vacuuming and scrubbing bathrooms? Or if you have physical limitations that make doing the cleaning uncomfortable or even painful?
Well-then you have a choice. Is it worth you working 5 hours to have someone else do it for you. The answer to that question is purely up to the individual.
My mother, who is a nurse, has someone come in and clean her house. She really hates to clean. Mom would much rather do work that she loves and take on a couple of extra home health care cases a week to pay for the housekeeper.
New York mama Jenn has been blogging about ways to "Use what you have, get creative an save!" over at Frugal Upstate since 2006. As one of the "Eleven Moms" (Walmart Money Saving Moms), she creates fun and informative vlogs on a variety of money saving topics.
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