Alanz Eyes

Is it really worth it?

October 3rd, 2007 - Posted by Alan Howard

Deidre and I are finding a new perspective lately which is really helpful when deciding what we can do ourselves, and what we can get others to do.

Because we’re moving house, there’s a lot of things that need doing. However, in the past 9 months we’ve moved twice. Once from New Zealand to Canberra, and once again into this house 4 months ago. We’re over moving. Really over it. We’re so over it, we decided we would get others to do the things we just don’t want to do.

So we worked out how much our time was worth.

This is easy for you to do too. How much do you get paid for your work? If there’s two or even more of you, how much do you get paid collectively for your work?

This figure is how much your time is worth to you. If you want to have something done, but you don’t want to do it yourself, then you can get someone else to do it for you. As long as you can get it done for less than what your own time is worth, then you’re coming out on top.

So we’ve got furniture movers and cleaners to come in and do everything for us, and they’re costing us less than what we get ourselves. This gives us a profit. The profit is in the extra time we’ve gained to do other things.

A great part of your personal wealth is your time.

The more time you have, the more able you are to do the things that are important to you, or even to generate more wealth for yourself. You need to work out the cost-benefit ratio for yourself.

Let’s look at car servicing, for example. I know that a lot of people enjoy working on cars, servicing them, making them run better, fixing any problems they might have with them. They have the skills, the resources, and the interest in doing it.

I have no skills in car maintenance, nor the resources, and no interest in learning or doing it myself. It’s a waste of my time and my money to try. So instead, I, like many others, pay others to service my car for me. This is because the cost of getting someone else to do it is less than the cost of doing it myself.

This cost-benefit ratio needs to be applied to everything in your life. Work out how much your time is worth. Get someone else to do the things you don’t want to do, and make sure you’re paying them less than what you would earn for the same amount of time.

Use the time you’ve now gained yourself to do something you WANT to do, like spend more time with your family, or brainstorm more ways to make money - or save money. Without time, you don’t have the time you need to build your wealth.

So is it worth investing in yourself, by giving yourself more time to focus on what’s truly important to you?

You bet it is.

Entry Filed under: Self Improvement