The cliché is true.
If life is overwhelmingly busy and you never have enough hours to relax, you can always buy time. That is, hire someone to do what you’d rather not. Time is money, but it can be easy to forget what that really means. To claim more of your own time, it frequently means paying someone else for their time and expertise. If you’re curious how much that will cost, here are some estimates.
Clean
You need to clean your home, but you’d like to hire someone else to do it. The national average for maid services — for a one-time cleaning — is $196, according to HomeAdvisor.com. Keep in mind that if you hire a maid service to clean regularly, the cost will usually come down from that one-time price. Maid services tend to reward regular customers.
Estimated cost: $196
Estimated time saved: Three hours
Mow
In 2014, the average cost to hire someone to cut your lawn was between 6 and 31 cents per square foot, according to Homewyse.com. Before you whip out the calculator and try to remember how big your yard is, the site suggests budgeting anywhere from $12.25 to $61 for about two hours of lawn mowing.
Estimated cost: About $35, if your yard is somewhere in the middle.
Estimated time saved: Two hours, but if it’s a weekly service, as much as eight hours a month.
Fix, build or assemble something
In 2013, most people paid an average of $74.18 per hour for a handyman, according to Angie’s List, a subscription-based website with reviews of local businesses. You might hire a handyman for a variety of reasons: to repair something inside your home, retile your bathroom or assemble backyard playground equipment or a perhaps a shed.
Estimated cost: $75 an hour
Estimated time saved: A couple of hours or a couple of days, depending on the project.
Cook
Most people go with the old standby when they want someone else to cook for them: a restaurant. But if you want to treat yourself, you could hire a personal chef. According to Angie’s List, some chefs charge per person, with an average of $20 to $30 per plate, while others charge $30 to $40 an hour. You may pay extra for the groceries, so ask beforehand.
Estimated cost for a family of four: $120 per meal
Estimated time saved: Maybe an hour
Organize
Is your house a disaster and beyond help from a maid service? If so, you may want to hire a professional organizer to help corral your clutter. To hire a professional organizer to help with a project, like organizing a room, it will cost $322 to $577, according to home improvement site ImproveNet.com.
Estimated cost: Approximately $400
Estimated time saved: Four hours, but potentially hundreds more if your organizer’s system is successful.
Run errands
If errands are dragging you down, hire someone else to handle them. The slew of errand services available includes Task Rabbit and Agent Anything. Generally, you either post a price with your errand or you post an errand, and people will name a price. Meanwhile, services like Fancy Hands handle non-driving tasks that feel like errands — like finding an entertainer for your 10-year-old’s birthday party.
Estimated cost: $30 or less
Estimated time saved: An hour or more, depending on your errand.
Scoop poop
If you’re tired of picking up your dog’s business, you could call on one of these services with catchy names like DoodyCalls.com, Poop911.com and Pet Butler. The cost of these services often depends on your location, the size of your yard and how many dogs you have. But expect to pay someone $15 a week. You might not just save time, but also your back.
Estimated cost: $15 a week
Estimated time saved: 15 minutes a week
Trim trees
This probably isn’t a task you tackle every month, but it’s a good idea to trim your trees at least once annually, according to ImproveNet.com. Expect to pay a lawn care service $170 to $333 for tree trimming, the site says. If you have a mighty oak stretching into the sky, you could pay up to $1,000, according to the payment comparison site CostHelper.com.
Estimated cost: $300 a year or more
Estimated time saved: At least three hours
Reality check
If you paid every one of the aforementioned services regularly, you’d probably have at least 14 extra hours to yourself every month. Of course, paying for all of these services isn’t pragmatic for many households since you’d have to budget hundreds of dollars a month. But employing one or two of them may buy you some much-needed downtime. It’s a strange irony: How you spend your time often depends on how you spend your money.
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