Do it yourself (DIY) has a big following.  Below is an article from an economist talking about the different layers of DIY thinking.   Here is my take:
 
— I want to always do more of what I love and less of what I don’t.  This is my first layer.

— I value my time more than most anything else.  That’s my second layer.

— If I had to make a decision between doing tasks around the house or working more…I chose to work more. My career is the top priority — my third layer.

As a side note, when we had young kids, we decided to take as many trips to cool places as possible.  We valued family time the most.
 
I don’t even like (much less love) doing work around the house.  So, I hire as many people to take care of household tasks as possible. Others might love the challenge that a DIY project brings, or find value in the dollars saved by doing it themselves.  I want to use my time to live MY Fantastic Life — and you should do the same.
 
Open for comments or counterarguments.   😊

 

 

The Fantastic Life Rule #11:
Don’t Waste Time  
For someone with a passion for crafts and woodworking, embarking on a DIY project is not time wasted. For someone like me who values the work I do and my other hobbies, those tasks suck up too much time. Spend your time wisely. 

 

 

The Economics of DIY

Should you hire someone to mow your lawn or clean your house? It’s a question of opportunity cost.

By Roland Fryer

July 17, 2025 12:55 pm ET

Illustration: Robert Neubecker

Americans are obsessed with doing things ourselves. We clean our houses, assemble our furniture and grill our burgers—even when we’d be better off hiring someone else.

I still mow my lawn and cook most nights for my family, even though I work 80 to 90 hours a week, not counting my side hustle as an unpaid driver and sideline soccer coach for my two daughters. I’m an economist, able to think through these decisions rationally, yet here we are.

When a friend invited me to play golf and I declined because the yard needed mowing, he didn’t hide his disbelief. “You can pay someone to cut your lawn,” he said, “but you can’t pay someone to have fun for you.”

He meant it as a joke. I took it as an indictment. He was calling me out on one of the most basic principles in economics: opportunity cost, meaning the things you give up when you spend your resources, including time and money, on something else.

Was he right? Maybe. But a truly economics-informed approach to DIY is more nuanced than it seems.

It’s tempting to treat decisions like this as simple arithmetic. Add up the cost of hiring help. Compare it with your hourly wage. Voilà. In that light, it does seem crazy for a tenured professor to mow his own lawn. It seems even crazier to do what I did as a broke grad student, when I hired a daily housekeeper so I could stay focused on what mattered most: research, writing, teaching and the occasional videogame when I wasn’t consumed by the first three.

But that isn’t really thinking like an economist. Economic decision making is about considering the full set of options and how much you value each one. Sometimes, you may find yourself mowing the lawn when you can afford not to, or paying more than your hourly wage to hire help. Other economic concepts can illustrate why.

One is diminishing marginal returns. The value of an extra hour isn’t fixed—it depends on what came before it. If you’ve been working all weekend and finally carve out a free hour, mowing the lawn might feel like a punishment, and avoiding that punishment would be especially valuable. But if you’ve spent the weekend relaxing or playing with your kids, that same hour might feel restorative. The activity hasn’t changed, you have.

When I’ve been traveling too much and haven’t seen my daughters, I’ll sometimes take an Uber with them instead of driving, just so we can sit in the back and catch up. To me, that’s money well spent.

That brings me to a third economic layer to consider: American beliefs about identity and morality. We attach pride to doing things ourselves, and pride has value, too.

For some of us, mowing the lawn isn’t only about grass, time or money. It’s about what it says about us. It signals: I take care of my things. I don’t rely on others. I’m not above the work. Sometimes I wonder if I’m pushing that mower out of principle or because I want others to see me pushing it.

Beneath our pride lurks that opportunity cost my friend chided me about, a cost that too few people seriously consider. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans spend two hours a day on household activities like cooking, cleaning, laundry and yardwork. That’s more time than we spend exercising or socializing.

We probably should buy more of that time back, even if it means swallowing a little pride. Not everyone can or should outsource his DIY activities, of course. But a great many people perform these tasks out of habit, inertia or guilt and would be better off spending the money to get help. Here are some examples of how to think through this decision like an economist:

Jane is a corporate lawyer and workaholic. There aren’t enough hours in her day. Her rare moments of free time are precious—and she’s got cash to burn. For her, paying someone to clean the house or prepare dinner isn’t indulgence. It’s common sense. This is an easy one.

Heather is short on both time and money, and hiring a cleaner would cost more than she makes at work. Unless she really hates cleaning or needs that time for something urgent, she’s probably better off doing it herself. That isn’t a failure. It’s the most rational choice given her circumstances.

John is a middle-class dad with modest savings and limited flexibility at work. If he wants extra time at home, he can’t simply clock out early. He pays the cleaner more than he makes per hour, so on paper, it doesn’t seem to add up. Yet if it buys him time to read to his kids or help with homework or simply be less stressed after a long shift, it might be the smartest money he spends all week. He isn’t maximizing his present disposable income, but he’s boosting his lifetime utility.

Which version of me was more rational: the grad student who outsourced chores, or the tenured professor who mows his own lawn? Both. My circumstances changed. Back then my time was cheap but my future was expensive, and buying time to develop as a young professional was a good investment. Now my time is costly, but the stakes are lower, and I’ve come to take pride in doing certain things myself. Viewed through that lens, both decisions make economic sense.

But I still hear my friend’s voice every time I crank up the mower or change my own oil: You can pay someone to do those things. But you can’t pay someone to build your career, enjoy your kids, laugh with a friend, or recover from a long week.

If Americans put a fair price on their time—on their short- and long-term health, and their kids’ well-being—more households would outsource more DIY projects. We would do well to swallow our pride, hire some help, and buy back our lives.

Mr. Fryer, a Journal contributor, is a professor of economics at Harvard, a founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.