Use Your Hourly Wage To Tackle Or Outsource To-Dos

There are lots of chores you can outsource, but you need to be sure you aren’t spending more than what the job is worth to you. Once you know your hourly wage, you can decide if a task is worth doing or paying someone else to do it.

Money picture from Shutterstock

Even if you’re salaried, you should track your hourly wage. The easiest way to do that is to subtract all your work expenses from your total salary, calculate a year’s worth of work hours based on your timings (including commutes), and divide the first number by the second.

As The Chicago Tribune points out, this shouldn’t be a straight mathematical equation. Use your own discretion:

First of all, especially when it comes to home life, efficiency is not the only value. I enjoy making dinner, and it doesn’t typically take more than an hour on weeknights, so I indulge myself.

Second, outsourcing your life is not friction-free. Even if you just have occasional odd jobs, it’s ideal to form an ongoing relationship with one or a few people to do them. If you can trust someone to watch your kids, hopefully you can trust them with your dry cleaning.

The larger point is to find out when it’s worth outsourcing a task, and an hourly wage makes that easy.

Crucial to-do list consideration: What’s your hourly wage? [The Chicago Tribune]