Last week, I was contemplating a purchase. The windshield washer pump in our old Honda Element had died. Here is what I did:
- Looked up the price of the part online. Yay, only $13!
- Looked up the repair process on YouTube. Opposite of yay; it looks like a pain in the ass.
- Called a local repair place to get a quote: Between $200 and $300. Ugggh!
- Watched the YouTube video again. Still don’t want to do it.
Money Versus Time
I’ve worked on cars for much of my life. With the help of my dad, I rebuilt an engine on the first piece of junk car I ever owned, a Ford EXP. It was smelly, unreliable, and the front end looked like a frog, only not as attractive:
But our current vehicles have been reliable. I haven’t done much work on them besides changing the oil, rotating tires, and an occasional brake job. While I like to work with my hands, I hate working on cars. My adventures as an amateur mechanic usually go like this.
It’s 18 degrees outside and the starter is dead. (Cars know not to break down when the temperature is reasonable.) I dig out the jacks and raise the car. I lay on the cold ground and stick my hands into a cavity of the engine. I try to loosen a bolt I can barely see. The bolt has been there for 15 years and has zero interest in changing the status quo. I curse at the stubborn bolt loudly. After a bitter, bitter struggle, it suddenly breaks free. The wrench spins with great speed and I crash my knuckles into another part of the engine. Now there’s blood and more bad words.
Back to the current situation. I talked the situation over with Mindy who is aware of how much I despise auto repairs:
- Me: The windshield wiper pump is broken. Should I fix it myself or…
- Mindy (stern and with no hesitation): TAKE IT TO A MECHANIC.
- Me: But it’s gonna cost…
- Mindy: I don’t care. You hate working on cars. Take it in somewhere.
- Me: But, the money…
- Mindy: Zip it!
I’m stubborn, so I continued to ponder the situation. It was then that I had an epiphany.
It’s All About Efficiency
I was severely put out by the thought of paying someone more than $200 for work that I could do myself for $13. But, then my next thought was this:
Dude, you’re not a starving kid at university anymore. $200 won’t affect you in any way.
True enough. Makes perfect sense. And then I realized something else:
It’s not about the money, it’s about efficiency.
Are you like me? Do you:
- Go nuts when your kids leave lights on in the house?
- Plan your auto trips for maximum efficiency?
- leave at a certain time to avoid rush hour or crowds in stores
- plan the route to avoid waiting for lights at left turns
- plan trips to maximize stops (No way I’m driving across town just to go to Costco unless I have at least 2 other stops in the ara)
- Plan out DIY projects to minimize waste? (The instructions that came with my decking and flooring told me to plan for 10% waste. Nonsense. Plan carefully and you can often get by well under 5%.)
- Hate it when people waste food?
- Buy cars that are exactly as big as you need and no bigger?
- Take 5 minute showers?
- Insulate the crap out of your house to minimize the heating bill?
- Wait until you connect to wifi to do stuff on your phone?
- Spend hours trying to get the best deal when booking travel online?
These are the things I think about all the time. I hate waste! And the same applies to money. If I can repair the car for $13, why am I paying someone more than $200?
I’m not trying to save money, I’m trying to not waste a precious resource.
And then I had another thought…
It’s About Time
By repairing the car myself, I would have saved $200. However, it also would take me many hours. The auto repair place told me that the job would take 1.5 hours. It’s going to take me at least twice as long, but probably more. I’m inexperienced, don’t have a lift, and working in the cold slows you down.
So, the next progression in my thinking was this:
You value using money efficiently. Why don’t you value using time efficiently?
There were a million other things I’d rather be doing than working on the car. Why didn’t I value that?
I paid someone to fix the car. While the mechanic wrenched away, I sat in the waiting room with my laptop working on a project.
Money –> Time
I suppose my tale of auto repair is an evolution in thinking that many on the FIRE path will go through. Money has different values at different times. When I was a kid just out of university with a net worth of -$60,000, I would have changed that pump without a second thought. $200 meant everything back then. But now, the money situation is better and I should value time above pretty much everything else. Time to exercise. Time to read. Time for creative pursuits (like typing these words). Time for the family.
It took me a long time to figure this out. (See what I did there?)
Before you go, have another look at my crappy drawing above. See where those lines intersect? Consider if your own life story has already passed this point. It if has:
- Be thankful. Life is pretty damn great when you don’t have to worry about money.
- Start living for yourself. Don’t let those dollars dictate your life. Put money in its place and start using it as a tool to fund quality time.
More 1500 Days!!!
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Not a thing on your list ever crosses my mind. Of course some of them were purely crowded city dweller issues I never deal with. But the others, we do some of them out of habit, but never with any conscious thought. It’s meaningless small money. Forgeddaboutit.
Great post! Could definitely relate in this household. Having a trusted mechanic to do the jobs you don’t have time to do is definitely a blessing.
Efficiency is Sexy .com
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Damn right!
Your story about changing the starter reminds me of my first truck. In the dead of winter I had the same issue with a dead starter. In -20 pulling the starter while lying on frozen asphalt with bolts that were so cold and hard to remove, my poor frozen hands. The shims were not installed right and it couldn’t grab the fly wheel and I ended up having to go back under and redo those bolts two more times. Fun times!
At the time being able to fix the truck without needing a tow or paying a mechanic was worth it, plus I have a great story to tell. Not sure I would do the same today (older, wiser and wealthier)
I agree with you, this is a good evolution to people who are in the fire world.
Thanks for the reflection!
Your graph reminds me of the board game dominion. Early game it takes a lot of effort to collect coin cards, but as the game goes along your forced to shift strategy to using the coins to enable you to gather victory points, by game end coins are worthless and victory points are all that matters.
That sounds kinda cool. I’ve never played. Would you recommend this game?
I feel like you’re calling us all out. I answered yes to almost all of the questions. Except for the insulation one, as we dont need to worry about heat escaping. For another perspective, sometimes it’s better to pay a pro to do it, because you might mess up something even more doing it yourself, and make it cost more to fix. Here’s hoping for many more miles with your Element- those cars are workhorses.
The Element is almost 200,000 miles old and still runs great! Except for that pump. I love that orange box!
Ha ha, this is so me over the years. I watch youtube videos to see if it something I can do and want to do when I determine if it is worth repairing myself. Time vs. Money. Enjoy life and as already mentioned in the comments “Forgeddaboutit”.
Forgeddaboutit!
Seems like a good t-shirt! And perhaps life-motto!
I think that’s a perfect graph to represent the time/money equation, but at what point would you actually DIY the car repair yourself? $1,000? $2,000? More?
Usually car jobs take me 2 or 3 times longer than a repair shop, but most auto shops are charging $150-200/hour. That can definitely add up fast for bigger jobs.
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I agree 1000%. I can’t tell you how many bolts/screws I’ve destroyed or stripped in the cold Illinois weather. I’ve tried everything from heat guns, swearing, clanging and banging, swearing, grease, swearing, special sockets, swearing, cutting hoses, & and finally more swearing, etc…
& after 15 trips to Menards and talking to the old guy in the back (the only person in the store who knows what he is doing by the way)…
I always come to the same conclusion. I should have just paid someone to do it and saved my Saturday.
Haha, but you didn’t mention a blow torch! I’ve been recommended it many times for stubborn mechanical parts, but it’s never worked for me.
Menards! I miss that place! The closest one to us is 90 minutes away, so I don’t make it there often. I don’t miss their stupid song that they play incessantly over the PA though! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYn5LVYuX2U
Ok, well I answered yes to most of your questions above except for showering time as I have gotten older i enjoy taking a nice long shower.
I do use that graph on each situation. For example, I hired out the tree trimming on two trees at my house instead of borrowing the chainsaw from my 80 year old dad and climbing up a ladder and maybe injuring myself. My dad when he found out that I paid(!) someone and gave me a hard time. (Dad is all about saving money and doing things yourself – yes even at 80). But I just smiled at dad and told him that my time is more valuable than saving a few bucks and probably a trip to the emergency room.
But I am repainting rooms in my house instead of hiring that out. So, that graphic can look different for each task. I enjoy painting and I also am not 100% sure on the paint colors I picked so I will spend my time on painting but not climbing a ladder with a chainsaw to trim a tree 40 feet off the ground!
How long did it take to actually get the part replaced? Hope the replacement part lasts another 10+ years.
Hi Deb!
Yeah, you have to pick and choose your battles carefully! I always used to encourage folks to DIY home projects, but if you despised the work, it may not be worth it. Do what you love and try to outsource the rest!
Your dad: I LOVE the old-school mentality! He sounds like a great person!
Part replacement: It took about 2 hours. Money well spent!
Heard about someone my brother works with who recently tried to do the tree trimming himself to save a few hundred dollars even though he could have easily afforded it. He fell and died. Now his family has to go on without him. Tree trimming is not something to scrimp on if climbing and cutting is part of the package.
Am I the only one still pondering on the impossible goal of 5 min shower?
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Divide $300 by your net worth… get on with what you enjoy doing with your time!
Haha, I need to think more like this!
Money is time and time is money. There are people who trade time for money but it is a weird way to go. However, as you get more wealthy, you can buy time by paying other people to do stuff for you.
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Carl, this post really resonated with me. We are huge on efficiency in our household as well. Chris and I just had the exact same discussion about a car repair. And, he still chose to fix it on his own ;). We need to pull up your fancy chart more often!
Jess!
How the hell are you? Long time, no see!
I’m so sorry to hear about Chris, but he’s gonna be alright.
And, he can come over any time and work on our cars!
When I watched the video of you finishing the basement or building the curved deck the *only* thing I could think of was how happy I was to pay to have my basement and deck done for me. Yes they were expensive.
However, they were done the most efficiently way I knew how – bring in the experts. After I finally figured out which tool was a hammer, I would have had 400% waste.
Nowadays, I simply go by the old Lethal Weapon meme, “I’m too old for this shi….” This video montage even has the obligatory “dinosaur” mention – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q37xJtuQ24w
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Haha, I’m almost there!
We’d probably actually hire more out, but it’s so difficult to find competent workers here.
Love the idea of being efficient with our time as well as our dollars. Too many in the FIRE world undervalue their time, and do some odd things to save a buck.
I do oddly enjoy working on the cars…at least most of the time. Or maybe, I enjoy the feeling a lot after having worked on the car. It’s similar with writing. A lot of the time, I don’t enjoy the actual writing. But I like having written, as the saying goes.
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Oooh, if you want more time working on cars, I just smacked our Honda Element into a curb and now have to replace much of the suspension! Fun! Not! At least for me…
Plus, you’re putting a coyote of hundred bucks into the local economy. That’s an efficient use of your wealth, imo.
*couple
Dang, autocorrect!
Mom & I pondered winning a very large lottery. As we have most of what we need, the things we came up with were having someone else do tasks we can do, but would rather not. A part of that discussion was that we are giving that person a job / task. We’re not just giving them $300, we’re valuing their time & expertise and probably tools we don’t have. We may be supporting their small business.
In some ways being on the road to FI or being FI is a mini lottery. We’ve got more money than time.
Yikes I feel as though you wrote this for my husband; the man who got so obsessed with insulation he bought an infrared thermometer 😀 😀 :D. To his credit, we have an old home.
I have that same tool! Send your husband over so we can geek out!
We might be brothers! But I did consider just how important it would be to have a window washer on an old Honda anyway. I could was the window at a gas station when necessary……
“I could was the window at a gas station when necessary……”
I thought so too! But, in the winter at high speeds, other cars kick up loads of stuff. I had to pull over a couple of times on a recent drive to clean the windshield with random napkins.
I have the same efficiency issues. Now that I am on the right side of your time/money curve, I do hire out some jobs that I could do myself. Still, it has not been as easy as you would think sometimes. One issue is that I have found it really hard to find people to do jobs properly and I often spend time and accrue frustration dealing with that moreso than if doing the job myself. The second part is really my choice, if it is a task I know how to do but hate (like your pump change) I will hire it out. If it is something that I can learn how to do, I usually do it. Investing time into learning a new skill brings me happiness. Investing time into mundane things like landscaping or simple projects also bring satisfaction in a different way. Having more money has allowed me to free up more time by working less, but I still feel the need to fill that time doing something. Spending a lifetime of focusing on efficiently using time and not sitting around wasting it has done that to me.
-LD
“One issue is that I have found it really hard to find people to do jobs properly…”
So true, especially for home construction in my case. I may take a long time, but the results are always good.
And yeah, I like the simple projects too. Sometimes, mowing the lawn, gardening, vacuuming etc. can be relaxing and meditative*.
*Is this a word?!??
Carl, I have two words for you when you next have a car issue:
CALL ME.
Haha, can I fly you out to Colorado too?!
I think I have all of the same thoughts on your list. Are we soulmates lol?
Haha, maybe?!??
Great story. I like the exchange between your wife and you in the beginning. Cars are so complicated now that it is simper to take it in to the shop. You need to anyway for the warranty purposes for the first few years.
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