7 February 2008 3 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

I’m a big believer in saving money by doing things myself. I cook from scratch, do little bits of maintenance around the house, all sorts of things to keep costs down. I generally feel pretty competent to tackle most problems, as long as I can get an instruction manual or find a ‘how-to’ online. There are a few tasks that I just don’t feel up to, though, either for home use or for work.

1. Higher level plumbing problems. My plumbing knowledge is about at the “Draino fixes clogged drains” level. If a task requires tools, I call a friend, or even a professional. I’ve seen the results of mishandled plumbing problems and it seems like the costs escalate for every moment a non-plumber tinkers with it.
2. Most car issues. With a really good instruction manual, I could probably figure out changing the oil on a car. I’ll be the first to admit, however, that I have no automotive skills, whatsoever. I know there’s an engine and I know there are brakes. That is the limit of my knowledge. In the past, I’ve often bartered for automotive help from able friends. With a Prius and its newfangled batteries, though, I feel that it’s worth it to take it to a professional for a lot of things, if only to keep various relatives from electrocuting themselves.
3. HTML. I have a basic working knowledge of HTML, and CSS. If I had to, I could put up a nice 1995-era web page without any trouble. But for most of my projects, someone’s already come up with a better solution for most problems. Wordpress is a fantastic example — I can get a blog up and running in a few minutes. Why reinvent the wheel?

With a little concentrated study, I could handle projects in any of these areas. We may be talking about a steep learning curve, but they’re all doable. But I run into the question of how much is my time worth? With some DIY stuff, such as cooking, there’s either not much of a time commitment or you can multi-task. If I had to learn the skills to do such projects first, though, I might be facing a commitment of so many hours that it becomes cheaper for me to spend those hours working and pay a professional. And what if you can get a project done with no major time or financial commitment, such as finding the right software? There are plenty of situations I can think of when I could do a project myself, but I could also find a similar project, already completed, for free! I certainly can’t justify wasting my own time that way.

What about you? What projects do you let other people handle?

Thumbnail image by Kaworu Koneru