As many of us have willingly become accustomed to paying extra for modern day conveniences, we have lost touch with the benefits of doing things ourselves. Some of us have even become so dependent on others to do things like cleaning, cooking, or sewing for us that we no longer even know how to do those things on our own.
There is no doubt that doing things ourselves, as opposed to hiring someone to do them for us, does take time that could be spent on other more enjoyable activities. Clearly that’s why people hire Landscapers, Cleaning Crews, go to Restaurants, etc. And, consequently those service providers happily charge a premium for performing those services that save us time.
But in tighter economic times, there may now be a new resurgence of people being forced to go back to basics and start doing more things themselves in order to save money.
For those of you reluctant to give up your already limited free time, let’s look at some benefits of doing things yourself:
- You learn new skills that you can repeat again, more quickly, the more you apply them.
- The cost of the materials needed to do things yourself will likely be considerably less than the hourly service fees you pay to have someone else do it.
- You will know a lot more about the details and quality of materials that went into your project
- You are more likely to achieve a better quality outcome because you care more about what you are doing than a hired hand might.
- You can more easily customize things to your specific needs (e.g., colors, sizes, materials, enhancements, options, etc.)
- You will appreciate the end result more as you are more aware of the effort that went into getting it done than if someone else did it for you.
- You can enjoy the satisfaction and accomplishment of knowing you did it yourself.
- You feel more self sufficient knowing you don’t need to rely on others as much as you thought you did.
As you consider which projects to take on yourself, keep in mind that there are some projects that you are truly better of leaving to experts, such as electricity, plumbing, etc.
But for those projects that require less expertise, and are usually avoided simply because of the time involved in doing them, you might be surprised at how much money you can save (and to spend on other fun things later) by adopting more of a Do-It-Yourself attitude.