ORLANDO, Fla. – Time is money.
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And for years, we’ve spent money to save ourselves time.
We pay someone to cut our hair, mow the lawn, wash the car, clean the house, fix what’s broken, or bring dinner to the front door. But what happens when saving time gets too expensive?
It’s no secret that the things we buy cost more than they used to, but so does paying someone else to do things for us. Which raises a Dollars & Sense question: when did someone else’s labor become a luxury purchase? Because when the price of convenience gets too high, there’s another option.
You make do.
Cut your own grass. Wash your own car. Cook your own dinner. Maybe even watch a YouTube video and attempt that repair yourself.
You’ll save money, but how much and what will it cost you in time?
What Does Convenience Cost?
Consider what could be called the “convenience basket” – services an ordinary household might outsource over the course of a year:
- Lawn care
- House cleaning
- Car washing
- Holiday decorating
- Meal delivery
- Grocery delivery
- Wash-and-fold laundry
Each is a job you could do yourself. Paying someone else to do it is, in part, paying to get some of your time back.
And those purchases of time can add up.
A $50 lawn service twice a month costs $1,200 over a year. A $150 house cleaning twice a month costs another $3,600. Spend $20 twice a month washing the car and that’s another $480. Those three services alone would total more than $5,000 a year.
Of course, those figures are examples rather than universal prices – the actual cost will depend on where you live, the size of your home or lawn, the service you choose, and how often you use it.
But eliminating the service doesn’t eliminate the job because someone still has to do it.
Are Americans doing more themselves?
There is some evidence that Americans are spending more time doing household work – although the trend isn’t the same for every chore.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey found that 80.9% of Americans age 15 and older performed some type of household activity on an average day in 2025. Across the entire population, Americans spent an average of one hour and 59 minutes a day on household activities.
Food preparation and cleanup stands out.
In 2005, 52.2% of Americans prepared food for themselves on an average day. By 2025, that had increased to 65.2%.
Americans also spent more time doing it: the average across the entire population increased from about 31 minutes a day in 2005 to about 43 minutes in 2025.
But the same shift hasn’t happened with every job.
The percentage of Americans doing housework on an average day was 36.9% in 2005 and 36.1% in 2025. Lawn and garden care was similarly steady – 10.3% in 2005 compared with 10% in 2025.
In other words, saving money isn’t necessarily enough to convince us to take every job back.
Would you hire yourself?
This is where the math gets interesting.
Suppose paying someone to wash your car costs $20. You can do it yourself using about $5 worth of supplies. That’s $15 saved. But suppose washing the car yourself takes an hour. That’s effectively a $15 return on the hour you spent doing the job yourself.
Was it worth it? Change the numbers and the answer might change, too.
- Saving $50 by spending an hour mowing the lawn is effectively a $50 hourly return on your time.
- Spending three hours on a job to save $30 works out to just $10 an hour.
You can make the same calculation before taking almost any household job back:
- Amount saved ÷ time required = your effective hourly return
It’s not a perfect economic calculation because you might enjoy mowing the lawn or hate cleaning the house. Some jobs require equipment you don’t own, while others require expertise that makes hiring a professional the safer choice.
And an hour of free time doesn’t have a universal dollar value.
That’s the point.
The Do-It-Yourself Economy isn’t simply about figuring out what you can do yourself. It’s about deciding whether you’d rather spend your money or spend your time.
Because sometimes the cheapest person you can hire is yourself.