Thanks for writing this! I think this is a direction that it would be valuable for more people to move in, on the margin.
On the other hand, as someone who went pretty far in this direction and has since backed off some, I think there can be some pretty strong trade-offs here that I don’t see you getting into, around putting oneself in a position where you might spend time to save money in ways that are not actually worth it.
Let’s say you have a directly useful job, or you are earning to give in a field where your long-term compensation is going to track your overall productivity. These are both situations I’ve been in, and I think they’re reasonably common? There tends to be a lot of opportunities to choose between more work time or less spending. Ex:
If my house needs repairs, it’s generally much cheaper for me to do it myself rather than hire someone, and I’ve done a lot of this over the years. To the extent that this is something I enjoy doing, it’s not a bad hobby! But more recently, I’ve been spending more of my “hobby” time on kinds of extra work for my org (tasks that I find less draining than my usual work). If a big repair came up, I think it would likely be actually a large mistake for me to put a lot of time into resolving that myself if that meant doing less of my primary work.
Say I’m going to take a week off of work to spend with family. My work has unlimited vacation, so I could choose to take an extra day off on each end so I could travel by bus instead of spending more on a plane. But since it’s better for me to put more work in, being willing to spend the money on the plane is better.
I generally agree with this, and would like to reemphasize “I think this is a direction that it would be valuable for more people to move in, on the margin.”
i think less people fall into the trap of trading inefficiency for frugality (although plenty do including me) than giving as much as they would actually like to if deeply considered.
Mistakes in the other direction are also common! It’s easy for young professionals to use the average value of their time to calculate tradeoffs, rather than the marginal value. When you’re making $80 per hour, doordashing every meal starts to make some sense, as do laundry services, etc. I’m not against these things, but the time savings often go to leisure rather than career reinvestment.
This is totally fine, and sometimes necessary, as long as people are correctly identifying what they’re really buying and what the price is.
Thanks for writing this! I think this is a direction that it would be valuable for more people to move in, on the margin.
On the other hand, as someone who went pretty far in this direction and has since backed off some, I think there can be some pretty strong trade-offs here that I don’t see you getting into, around putting oneself in a position where you might spend time to save money in ways that are not actually worth it.
Let’s say you have a directly useful job, or you are earning to give in a field where your long-term compensation is going to track your overall productivity. These are both situations I’ve been in, and I think they’re reasonably common? There tends to be a lot of opportunities to choose between more work time or less spending. Ex:
If my house needs repairs, it’s generally much cheaper for me to do it myself rather than hire someone, and I’ve done a lot of this over the years. To the extent that this is something I enjoy doing, it’s not a bad hobby! But more recently, I’ve been spending more of my “hobby” time on kinds of extra work for my org (tasks that I find less draining than my usual work). If a big repair came up, I think it would likely be actually a large mistake for me to put a lot of time into resolving that myself if that meant doing less of my primary work.
Say I’m going to take a week off of work to spend with family. My work has unlimited vacation, so I could choose to take an extra day off on each end so I could travel by bus instead of spending more on a plane. But since it’s better for me to put more work in, being willing to spend the money on the plane is better.
I generally agree with this, and would like to reemphasize “I think this is a direction that it would be valuable for more people to move in, on the margin.”
i think less people fall into the trap of trading inefficiency for frugality (although plenty do including me) than giving as much as they would actually like to if deeply considered.
Mistakes in the other direction are also common! It’s easy for young professionals to use the average value of their time to calculate tradeoffs, rather than the marginal value. When you’re making $80 per hour, doordashing every meal starts to make some sense, as do laundry services, etc. I’m not against these things, but the time savings often go to leisure rather than career reinvestment.
This is totally fine, and sometimes necessary, as long as people are correctly identifying what they’re really buying and what the price is.